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Every so often a product comes down the pipe that makes you sit back and say “huh??”. Just such an item is the Peek. Complete specs on this device are not available yet but what we know is that it is a small, thin phone-like device with a good sized squarish color screen (not a touch screen) and a QWERTY keyboard, and it receives email via T-Mobile’s network.

That’s it…just mail. Via Exchange Server, Gmail, Yahoo mail, what have you…mail. Ya know, the kind you read. Words, words, words…just words.

No phone service, no web camera, no net browsing, no video, no mp3s, no voice recorder, no calendar, no third party apps…not even a lame-o game like Bubble Breaker. Just mail. We don’t even know if it has push mail. All we know is..mail. E Mail. Shaken not stirred.

For emails and nothing but emails, the Peek is slated to be sold for 100 bucks at Target come September. Plus you’ll need a 20 bucks a month account with T-mobile to get…wait for it….email.

Admittedly, it is a pretty cool design, I like it’s styling and the keyboard looks like it would be easy to use….but for the same money, why not get a Centro, which has luxury addons like phone service.

Is there a market for a device that JUST does cellular email? I have been sitting here wracking my brain to work out why anyone would want such a device to JUST get email. If it were hella cheap, like 30 bucks with the account added in, then I could see it. Maybe if it had some special kind of unbeatable encryption, or dissolved in water in case you or your Impossible Missions team are captured or killed. Maybe if it were ultra small, or wafer thin, or had 5 weeks of battery life, or a accelerometer, or Steve Jobs said “Buy a Peek, dude”, or if it had a screen that rolled out, or smelled like chocolate chip cookies, or could communicate with the dead…SOMETHING beyond simple email, a feature that now you can get on pretty much anything with a cellular radio. Hell, some mp3 players can get email now.

What do you think? Would you buy a Peek? If so…why? Please tell us. Help me out here, I won’t be able to sleep until I understand this.

Just….email?

Zealot (445 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).