The Peek handheld is an unusual premise in an age of convergence gadgets and all singing, all dancing smartphones. It’s not a mobile, it doesn’t stream live video and it doesn’t even send texts. It just sends email, and nothing more, and it’s heading to Europe, complete with no roaming charges wherever you go on the continent.
The Peek handheld has been out for some time in the US, but now it’s headed to this side of the Atlantic, courtesy of Spanish Wi-Fi company Fon. After a €99 (£89) upfront charge, there are no hefty roaming data charges you can rack up over 3G: everything is done over GPRS, BlackBerry style. For the first six months, that service is free, and €12.90 (£11.60) thereafter, but won’t go up no matter how much you use the Peek abroad.
Intriguingly, Fon’s CEO, Martin Varsavsky, says that more functionality will be coming to the Peek, including web browsing and Twitter, which is surprising since in the US, Peek has a separate, dedicated and ridiculous device called the Twitter Peek. We’ve dropped both companies a line to clarify this.
If you’re on and off planes all the time and Accounts won’t fork out for BlackBerry enterprise service, you might well want to take a look at the Peek. It’s available to order from Fon.com from the 15th, but won’t ship until January.
Out January 2010 | €99 | Peek and Fon (Via TechCrunch)
