Hasta La Gadget!

T-Mobile has just posted a message to its Sidekick forum saying that the company has recovered ‘most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the outage.’

T-Mobile plans to begin restoring data as soon as possible. It’s going to start with personal contacts, and then move on to calendar, notes, tasks, photos, and high scores–because we all know how important those are.

‘We now believe that data loss affected a minority of Sidekick users.  If your Sidekick account was among those affected, please continue to log into these forums for the latest updates about when data restoration will begin, and any steps you may need to take. We will work with T-Mobile to post the next update on data restoration timing no later than Saturday.’

Finally, here’s the current word on just what the heck happened: ‘We have determined that the outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up. We rebuilt the system component by component, recovering data along the way.  This careful process has taken a significant amount of time, but was necessary to preserve the integrity of the data.’

Looks like Acer may release a smartphone this year after all. The company has announced the Liquid A1, an Android-powered touch screen smartphone. It’s also the first Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Android device, with a 1 GHz clock speed that should banish all talk of sluggish user interface response.

As SlashGear reports, the Snapdragon processor also means the Liquid A1 will support accelerated 3G graphics. The Liquid A1 will come preloaded with Android 1.6. So far, we know about a few other Snapdragon devices, including the Toshiba TG01 and the drool-worthy HTC HD2–but those devices run Windows Mobile instead of Android, the report pointed out.

The Liquid A1 will feature WVGA resolution; Acer’s own proprietary UI; a geotagging 5-megapixel camera; and Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Picasa, and Flickr integration. No word yet on a price, release date, or even country–though this signals we may see 1GHz smartphones in the U.S. sooner rather than later.

Motorola and Sprint have unveiled the Motorola Debut i856, the first slider phone to feature Nextel Direct Connect push-to-talk. It also features a nifty trick: it’s the first device that lets you switch from a push-to-talk call to an interconnect voice call with a single button push.

The Debut i856 measures 4.2 by 2.0 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weighs just 3.1 ounces. It includes a bevy of multimedia features, such as TeleNav-powered GPS, NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile, NFL Mobile Live, a 1.3-megapixel camera with geotagging, Bluetooth, and a MicroSD card slot.

The Debut i856 costs $99.99 with a two-year service agreement and after rebates. It’s now available in Sprint stores.

For Sidekick users, the news went from bad to worse over the weekend. T-Mobile and Sidekick manufacturer Danger announced that user data lost on the devices due to “a server failure at Microsoft/Danger” may well be permanent.

“[O]ur teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information,” the companies said in a statement. “However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low.”

The companies also issued a strong recommendation for users, writing,

We continue to advise customers to NOT reset their device by removing the battery or letting their battery drain completely, as any personal content that currently resides on your device will be lost.

Here at the CTIA Wireless trade show today, I got some hands-on time with the Pantech Reveal, Pantech’s new quick messaging phone for AT&T.

AT&T’s CTO John Donovan pointed out in a keynote speech earlier today that quick-messaging phones, non-smartphones with keyboards that are perfect for texting, are the fastest-selling devices on AT&T’s network. Pantech’s specialty right now is in flooding the market with these gadgets; not only do they make a bunch for AT&T, they’re responsible for the TXTM8 on Cricket and the new swiveling Razzle on Verizon, too.

The Reveal is a relatively thin phone with a bright color screen and a slide-down QWERTY keyboard. Unusually, when you slide down the QWERTY, the main number pad remains in play, so you can use it for numbers if you want. (There are also numbers on the QWERTY.)

The fit and finish of this phone feels excellent; Pantech’s work has been getting better with time. The Reveal has 3G data, an MicroSD memory card slot, a media player, and a 2-megapixel camera with video recording to fill out a pretty decent midrange feature set.

The Pantech Reveal will come out on AT&T on October 18 for $79 with contract.