Peek Pronto Review

In an age where Iphones and Blackberry’s dominate the world of telecommunications, what is there left for those who want simple emailing without a costly plan? In comes the Peek. It was developed to an alternative to those complex Smartphones that have costly fees for services that people don’t want or need. For just $19.99 per month, you have unlimited access to PUSH email and text messaging. Simple, right? The Peek was made for people who live on budget and want the ability to check their email and messages without a hassle. Design-wise the Peek is the thinnest messaging device in the market. The screen is a 2.5 inch wide WVGA display and features a full qwerty keyboard that actually feels nice to type on. It has a single power button on the top right of the device, and a scroll wheel similar to early blackberries. The scroll wheel is the method used for navigating the Peek’s menu, and also through your email. Right under the scroll wheel, is the back button, which will take you back one menu, or if you keep pressing it back to your inbox, which is your start up menu. When you receive a new email, a blue envelope flashes on the top left of the screen, and it can vibrate and have a special ring to it (customizable).

Sending and receiving mail on the Peek is easy as well; the Peek Pronto runs on a PUSH network, so all of your emails are instantly sent to you as soon as it is sent. The Peek Pronto also supports 5 email accounts’ POP, IMAP, and now Exchange, so you can get email from work and school servers. It also allows for downloading of your contacts from your email, which currently works with aol, yahoo, hotmail, and gmail. I found this especially usefull considering the only email account that has all of my contacts is my gmail account. The Peek has an excellent battery life, allowing you to be able to use your Peek for days at a time before you need a recharge. Recently with the new software upgrade, the Peek now supports full text messaging. Simply typing the 10 digit number on the address line allows you to send messages to a cellular phone. It runs on a faster server than PUSH and uses the 3jam services, so the recipent gets a number that they can associate with your Peek and in turn reply to your message. Currently with the newest software upgrade, the Peek supports a new feature called "Peek Social" which allows you to update your facebook and LInkedIn accounts from the device. There are also a wide array of 3rd party services that you can use along with your Peek Device; for example using twittermail to update your twitter account, and ping.fm to update all of your different accounts at one time.

In the future, further support for twitter/IM/and social networking in general will be added to the Peek. The Peek Classic is currently on sale at Target for $9.99 and will cost $19.99 a month for the service, or you can pick up the Peek Pronto at radio shack for $39.99 and the monthly service of $19.99. Recently the Peek company has released a Peek Pronto with a lifetime of service for $299.99 at amazon.com.