The 3.8-ounce Peek measures 4.0 by 2.7 by 0.4 inches and comes with either charcoal grey, aqua blue, or black cherry plastic faceplates, and the the rear of the device is silver. The 2.5-inch QVGA (320-by-240), 65K color LCD screen is sharp but washes out in bright sunlight. Aside from the keyboard (which I'll get to in a moment), there are few hardware controls. On the right side, there's a stiff thumbwheel that also serves as an OK button when pushed in; below that is a Back button. The left side of the devices houses a proprietary charger port with a rubber cover, while the top panel holds a recessed power button. The Peek can be set to either vibrate, ring at three preset volume levels, or remain silent when new e-mail arrives. It comes with a slim power adapter, a carrying case, a Quick Start Guide, and a rechargeable lithium ion battery.
The QWERTY keyboard consists of raised rubber keys, which the company (also named Peek) claims can be used even with long fingernails. That may be true, but the keys are considerably stiffer than those on your average BlackBerry handset. They're also backlit, but unevenly—my test handset dimmed noticeably in the top row and around the edges. Having five rows of keys would normally be a luxury, except that the apostrophe, quotes, and @ symbol are all located at the bottom left, which is difficult to get used to, and the spacebar is too small. It also took a second or more for each key press to register on the screen. As a result, my normally brisk typing speed reduced to a crawl on the Peek.
The device can hook into Web mail accounts (such as Gmail and Hotmail) as well as ISP accounts from Comcast, Verizon, Earthlink, Cablevision, and NetZero, among others. There's no IMAP or Exchange support. Setting up an e-mail account is as easy as can be: key in your address and password, and the Peek figures out the rest. I set up Gmail and Yahoo accounts and was receiving new messages within minutes.
The Peek supports up to three e-mail addresses, but not in the way you'd expect: the device dumps them all into one inbox. While this makes things simple, it could be a problem for those who'd like to, say, sort incoming business messages from personal e-mail. Color-coding in the inbox would be a nice addition. You also can't tell which e-mail address a message was sent to until you open it, although the Peek always replies to and forwards messages from the correct account. The Peek also imports contacts from various e-mail services; my test handset imported my Gmail list, but it took a long time and the device hung while it was happening. The Peek supports type-ahead; begin keying in the name when composing a new message and it will pull up the correct e-mail address. Contacts are also shared among multiple e-mail addresses.
The device works over a tri-band (800/1800/1900 MHz) GSM-based GPRS data connection. There's no Wi-Fi. Anyone expecting quick, two-way conversations with someone while on the go—say at a grocery store or while standing in line—can forget it. I monitored the test Gmail account in three places: on a laptop PC (in Firefox), on a BlackBerry Curve 8330, and on the Peek. On average, the Peek took anywhere from two to six minutes longer to receive messages than the BlackBerry and Gmail desktop site. There was no pattern to the Peek's receive delay length, though messages often arrived in clusters (the Peek is a pull device, not push, but it polls in the background). Sent messages went much more quickly, sometimes appearing almost instantly on the other end, and sometimes taking up to about a minute.
The Peek can display JPG attachments, but it takes numerous extra clicks and a menu scroll to do so. The device can't display HTML messages, or view Microsoft Office documents or PDFs, although it does preserve attachments if you forward the message to someone else (providing they're under 10MB in size). In addition, a glacial data connection means you'll be waiting a long time to view photos—assuming it works. A 29KB Web graphic came up in about eight seconds. But a family picture, forwarded from a seven-megapixel Sony point-and-shoot camera, generated an error dialog suggesting I visit the Peek Web site for help.
Even basic editing is a pain, since there is no four-way control pad or trackball like there is on cell phones. The Peek's scroll wheel will navigate up and down over text as a kind of two-way control pad. But get ready to backspace in order to insert a word into an existing paragraph. The Peek features an embedded 104Mhz ARM7 CPU and TI Locosto single-chip wireless design. It also has only 7.5MB of free data memory, which could become another problem tout de suite once you receive a few attachments. The company claims the battery is good for two to three days of typical use.
The Peek falls into the "middle device" category populated by oddball designs like the Nokia N810 and the PC Edge / Datawind Pocketsurfer 2. That means you'll have to carry the Peek in addition to a cell phone, and you may still need your laptop on top of that. The Peek's narrow focus and simple setup is admirable in an age of complex devices, and the company's crusade against the ruthless cell phone companies (no contract! no late fees!) is also noteworthy. That said, the Peek isn't a cell phone. So what's the huge accomplishment?
It's also no bargain. For example, T-Mobile sells an unlimited BlackBerry e-mail plan for just $10 per month on top of a regular voice plan. The BlackBerry Pearl 8100 and BlackBerry 8700g were both available for $99 each at the time of this writing; that's the same price as the Peek, although both phones require a two-year contract. If carrying multiple gadgets doesn't bother you—which is still quite geeky, no matter what Peek says—and you just want something to tap out a few non-urgent messages, the Peek could be worth a look. But for most users, I'd say skip it.
SPEC DATA :
Price as Tested: $100.00 StreetType: Other
Screen Size: 2.5 inches
Operating System: Other
Network: GPRS, GSM
Bluetooth: No
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