Peek -- Engadget

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TwitterPeek review

by Laura June posted Nov 5th 2009 at 3:19PM

Peek is a company with ideas -- but they like to tackle them one at a time. Last year, amid snickering and cries of uselessness from the gadget world, the tiny company launched an email-only handheld that's attempted to bring the idea of email on the go to the smartphone fearing crowd... and we do know at least one avid user. Now the company has turned around and tried it again, this time with a seemingly even less essential device, the TwitterPeek.

The TwitterPeek works in conjunction with Twitter, and only with Twitter. It's that simple. There's nothing else to figure out or set up, so presumably, the idea is that the device, like the original Peek, is intended for the dumbphone lover who just can't go without a constant stream of Tweets. So, fair enough -- those of us who are more than a little tech savvy may find reason to smile at this, but supposedly this will be attractive to someone. Right?

So how did the TwitterPeek fare when we got our mitts on it? Read on to find out.

Gallery: TwitterPeek hands-on

Continue reading TwitterPeek review

The TwitterPeek is... a Peek for Twitter?

by Nilay Patel posted Oct 27th 2009 at 6:13PM

Peek's never been one to shy away from the wacky and opportunistic marketing schemes but launching a whole product just for Twitter? That's courage, drive, and possibly a mental health issue. Yet here's the TwitterPeek -- what looks to be the same old Peek you know, love, and probably haven't purchased, stripped of its email and SMS functionality and re-oriented towards telling the entire world too much about your body and what you're doing to it every waking moment of the day. Now, to be fair, we're getting a distinctly strange feeling of phoniness about this whole thing, but there's already an Amazon listing and a picture of the box has already surfaced on -- where else? -- Twitter, so this could really be happening. Just think about that for a second. And then tweet about it, of course.

[Via LiveDigitally]

Read - Amazon TwitterPeek listing
Read - Peter Ha's TwitPic of the box

Continue reading The TwitterPeek is... a Peek for Twitter?

Peek offers disgruntled Sidekick owners a free Pronto, internet high-five

by Darren Murph posted Oct 14th 2009 at 12:33PM

As Microsoft and Apple have so precisely demonstrated, there's nothing like a face full of egg to make the competition fire up the sucker punch machine. Take Peek, for example, who is now offering angered Sidekick users (you know, the ones that probably lost all of their data recently) a gratis Pronto for their trouble. All that's required is an image of you, a frowny face, your wiped Sidekick and a T-Mobile bill -- once that's sent over to Peek's dedicated inbox, you'll soon receive your Pronto in the mail. 'Course, it's up to you to foot the $20 monthly bill for keeping the thing active, but hey, free's free. Kind of.

Unbagging: Peek CEO Amol Sarva

by Engadget staff posted Sep 30th 2009 at 2:26PM

Unbagging is a new feature inspired by one of our favorite Flickr groups: what's in your bag? The premise is simple -- empty out your bag, arrange what's inside, and snap a photo. Engadget will be taking a look inside the bags of some of the people we know and love in the tech world, combining our two favorite pastimes of gadgetry and voyeurism. Want to be included? Send an email to unbagging [at] engadget [dot] com with your submissions!

Today's Unbagging installment comes from Peek CEO (and all around bon vivant) Amol Sarva. Clearly a man who loves the written word, you can see no less than three separate pieces of reading material here (though of course, two are made from dead trees -- do they still count?). If you want to see the whole list, click on through after the break. For a larger picture, as well as a group of reader submissions we've gotten, hit the gallery!

Gallery: Unbagging gallery 1

Continue reading Unbagging: Peek CEO Amol Sarva

Peek Pronto with lifetime service: $299

by Laura June posted Sep 28th 2009 at 5:01PM

Peek -- the handheld, bare bones email device which recently celebrated its first birthday -- has just launched a deal that's actually quite a deal. You can now get a Peek Pronto (the latest model) with lifetime service for $299. The Amazon exclusive includes all Peek's standard subscription features -- up to five email accounts with unlimited Push emailing, plus extras like its Twitter and Facebook feeds, -- only this time, it's forever. The deal will cover any future device upgrade you might make, too. If you or anyone you know were ever on the fence about buying one of these badboys, now is probably the time.

Peek manages to survive a whole year, promises more features for year two

by Darren Murph posted Sep 22nd 2009 at 11:12PM

We actually first caught wind of the Peek email-only handheld around 13 months ago, but today Peek is celebrating its first year as a company with a shipping product. During the past year, it has managed to ship two distinct devices and a good bit of functionality, but most importantly, it has managed to survive. Not sure if you've noticed, but the past dozen months have been twelve of the most tumultuous (financially, anyway) in American history, yet this startup is still going strong and looking forward to a second year full of "new features and services" and even a few international launches. Generally we don't stop to wish companies a happy first birthday, but seriously -- how many of you expected this firm to be around in late 2009?

Read - First Peek birthday
Read - Tales of survival

Peek cuts Peek Classic, Peek Pronto prices to $19.95 and $59.95

by Donald Melanson posted Jul 17th 2009 at 11:28AM

Peek's already offered lifetime subscriptions and all sorts of other incentives in the hope of wooing folks away from more expensive smartphones, and it looks like the company's now giving good old fashioned price cuts a(nother) try. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the basic Peek Classic has been slashed to just $19.95, down from the original $99.95 (or $49.95 more recently), while the Peek Pronto, which adds push email and Exchange support (among other features), will now run you $59.95 instead of the $79.95 it demanded when it launched just back in March. Service, however, remains at the same $20 per month as before.

Peek issues call for developers, yearns to build Linux-infused model

by Darren Murph posted Jul 9th 2009 at 7:54AM

Peek always has been a company for the people, with its suits sitting down late last year to listen intently to input from users regarding hacks and tweaks. Now, the outfit's looking for a bona fide Linux guru, someone who could get Linux running on the Peek's ARM7 processor and look suave doing it. The kicker? Should you succeed (and impress), you could score a "mini-consulting gig" with the top brass at Peek, and your work could one day revolutionize the fabled email-only handheld. Seriously, there's nothing but fear and debilitating hesitation stopping you, so once you're over that, hit the read link and get to work.

[Via SlashGear]

Engadget's recession antidote: win a Peek Pronto with a free year of service!

by Laura June posted Mar 27th 2009 at 12:00PM

This whole global economic crisis, and its resulting massive loss of jobs got us thinking. We here at Engadget didn't want to stand helplessly by, announcing every new round of misery without giving anything back -- so we decided to take the opportunity to spread a little positivity. We'll be handing out a new gadget every day (except for weekends) to lucky readers until we run out of stuff / companies stop sending things. Today we've got TWO (2!) Peek Prontos on offer. That's right -- your chances of winning today are much higher than normal because we've got two of them to give away. Read the rules below (no skimming -- we're omniscient and can tell when you've skimmed) and get commenting!

Special thanks to Peek for providing the gear!

The rules:

Leave a comment below. Any comment will do, but if you want to share your ideas for fixing the economy, that would be cool too.
You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you'll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.)
If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you'll be fine.
Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don't make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
Winner will be chosen randomly. The winners will receive one Peek Pronto and one year of free service. Approximate value is $320.
If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.
Entries can be submitted until Friday, March 27th, 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
Full rules can be found here.

Peek Pronto: Push email, Exchange support, multiple accounts

by Tim Stevens posted Mar 24th 2009 at 6:59AM

Boy, Peek wasn't kidding when it called its new device Pronto. With nary a press announcement to froth up the minds of mobile emailers the device has rushed straight to availability for $79.95, sadly in just one color. What does the $30 premium over the earlier Peek get you? Push email, Exchange support, and the device now allows for up to five accounts (the previous maxed out at two). The Pronto also supports PDF and Word attachments and (so the company claims) has overall faster performance (by 50 percent says the PR). Peek is also advertising unlimited text messaging, and while we're not yet sure if that's any different than the limited support the last model had, the Pronto should help you keep in touch with your daughter and your mother in one device. Service is still just $19.95, shipping now to the eager hands of complexity-averse messaging addicts everywhere.

Update: According to the PR, the Pronto is available exclusively at Amazon.com from March 24th until
March 31st, then will begin selling at getpeek.com April 1st, and in stores at Radio Shack come April 8th. Also, it's worth noting that the company has retooled the keyboards on the new devices, making the previously stiff keys a bit easier on the thumbs.

Gallery: Peek Pronto unboxing and hands-on

[Thanks, Mike H.]

Peek Pronto: is a new Peek device on its way?

by Joshua Topolsky posted Mar 18th 2009 at 7:16PM

We don't have much to go on here save for the image above (which a tipster discovered on Peek's peekforbusiness.com page). If we had to take a flying leap, we'd say that the company does indeed have something on the way -- perhaps a 3G device? That's pure speculation, but if anyone out there on the interblogs knows anything we don't, feel free to pass it along!

Update: It looks like Peek can't help themselves. On their hacky blog, Geeky Peek, they offer this tasty morsel:

Pronto is Leaked

What is Pronto?

I don't have much to say, but I will give a leak away.. it is much, much faster in every way possible.

The time to open a menu on 1.08 is .09 seconds. The time to open a menu on Pronto, .04 seconds!!!!

Peek arrives for small businesses in $149 5-pack

by Darren Murph posted Mar 17th 2009 at 5:34AM

As Peek continues to poke, prod and experiment in order to find the best niche(s) to serve, it has now pushed out a sweetly priced 5-pack designed for small businesses. Reportedly, "lots" of these smaller operations have been looking for "more affordable solutions" to everyone toting BlackBerry devices, and this is Peek's answer to that so-called demand. The offer, which delivers five Peek email-only handhelds for $149.95, is set to expire on April 3rd, and business owners should still be aware that each handset will require a $19.95 monthly fee to stay connected. Peek's David Madden has informed us that this offer is just the tip of the iceberg, noting that it has "a few more tricks up its sleeves for the SMB market." We're literally on the edge of our seats here -- aren't you?

Peek finds that Costco customers greatly prefer lifetime subscriptions

by Darren Murph posted Mar 5th 2009 at 9:19PM

We're not about to say "we told you so," but Peek's own David Madden has contacted us with a detail so telling that we simply had to pass it on. In an effort to understand whether the email-only handheld really would sell better if not hamstrung by monthly fees, it has been offering it up in two forms at Costco. A "$44 + monthly fees" package and an all-inclusive "Peek-for-life" bundle that sells for $399. So far, a whopping 70 percent of sales have been for the lifetime Peek, despite the fact that said bundle is a Benjamin more expensive than Peek's own one-day lifetime sale earlier this year. He also goes on to say that this pricing strategy (the no monthly fees one) "may yet be vindicated," hinting that the model could become a permanent option in the future. Oh, and we told you so.

Peek for Life: $299.95 one-day sale means no monthly fees

by Darren Murph posted Jan 16th 2009 at 7:05AM

Our biggest gripe with the Peek email-only handheld has always been the incredibly annoying $19.95 per month data plan. If you jump in today, however, you can forget all about those recurring charges. It seems the suits at Peek have finally stumbled upon what could actually be a viable business model for this unique handset, as they're offering the unit up for $299.95 with data included for the life of the device. Unfortunately, the deal is a one-day only affair, but truthfully, we fully expect this option to become the norm in the not-too-distant future.

Engadget's NYC reader meetup / holiday party is tonight!

by Joshua Topolsky posted Dec 19th 2008 at 12:00PM

This is it! The Engadget reader meetup / holiday party is happening tonight in New York City! All of the information you need is below, but we'd like to stress a few points:

The venue capacity has a limit, so make sure you get there early, and plan to wait in a bit of a line.
It is snowing like crazy in New York -- so please bundle up and come prepared for the elements! We'll do everything we can to move people inside as quickly as possible, and there's a coat check at the venue for your heavier gear.
Bring your ID! Without it, you can't get in!

And the rest of the details about the event:

We're giving away tens of thousands of dollars in gear! Including...
SanDisk 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB microSD cards for the first 200 people through the door!
Free food, and free drink tickets for the first 500 people
Live Q&A session with Engadget editors
Music for the evening will be provided by Justin VanDerVolgen (of !!! and Outhud)
The event is 18 TO ENTER / 21 TO DRINK, AND YOU MUST BRING AN ID. ADMISSION IS FREE. Sorry younger readers, but we'll do a follow-up all ages event soon!
The venue capacity tops out at a tiny bit over 1000, so you if you're coming, be sure to get there early!

When: Friday, December 19th, 7:00PM to 12:00AM
Where: Hiro Ballroom, 371 W. 16th St., New York, NY. 10011

You can discuss plans for the event on Facebook here.

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For media interested in attending, please ping us at: nycreadermeetup [at] gmail [dot] com
Note: space for media is very limited as this is a reader event. Readers, you're all set -- no need to email us.