Amazing: Peek will make your cell phone battery last longer
Smartphones are nifty but every extra feature drains more and more juice, making that all-important phone feature unavailable sooner.
That’s one of the big reasons we thought some people might like Peek — you separate out the battery life. Know that your phone is giving you its best, and you have a long-life Peek that keeps chugging on its own for up to five days.
The Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting “self-help” article for all those big shot smartphone warriors, and pointed out just how bad the problem is:
Similarly, email capability can drain power even when you’re not sending or receiving messages. Some smart phones constantly check for email updates, basically placing a call every other second. Some offer the option to increase the intervals between updates. Windows Mobile phones allow you to change the frequency of email updates and to set different frequencies for different times of the day. On any phone that’s low on power, it’s best to turn off the update function completely when checking email isn’t vital.
Mr. Lyrintzis says his cellphone barely lasts a day when it’s running normally. But after turning off the 3G connection and reducing the email updates to every 30 minutes, the device lasts an entire weekend with energy to spare.
What’s the point of having a smartphone if it dies after less than 1 day? And what’s the point of it if it can’t check your email continuously like a Peek??
Oh, the excitement of Peeks in motion
Reviews of our precious Peek are pouring in. There are a whole bunch of video demonstrations of the Peek in action. Check out this compendium from Youtube of New York Times, CrunchGear, MobileBurn, and lots of other product reviewers:
Plus, lots of other press reviews:
San Francisco Chronicle says “Early reviews and online orders suggest [Peek's] instincts are sound. The company has enjoyed mostly positive coverage and two of the three models are on back-order…” (we fixed that back-order thing now!)
Plus others who are excited to announce that Peek is widely available: Gadling, Joy of Gadgets, Chip Chick, and Mobile Burn (who has awesome pictures).
And by the way — remember that hurricane last week — this Peekster was blogging by Peek while their power was out at Irregular Times.
Can’t I just pay, like, $10 extra and get….?
People sometimes say to us, “hey, I can get a smartphone for like $10/15/20/25/30 extra per month!”
We’ve written about the ways cell phone companies play gotcha before.
Here is somebody’s real iPhone bill from AT&T. You know how you read about “oh it’s only like $70/month…” Well, this is how much it is really ($94.50 per month):
Ryan Block who is one of the masters of the tech blog universe wrote a blog entry just a couple of weeks back about when he got his new phone; it’s called “How hidden charges doubled my iPhone bill“.
Or, here is the New York Times reviewer’s take on his first iPhone bill:
It’s a staggeringly, hatefully complex document, designed by some Monty Pythoneseque committee in charge of consumer confusion.
For starters, although I signed up for what iTunes told me was a $60 plan (450 minutes, unlimited Internet), the bill says I have a $40 voice plan and a $20 Internet plan, and lists them on separate pages.
The first bill, believe it or not, comes to $150. It’s filled with unexplained services and features that were never mentioned during the signup process, like MEDIA MAX, EXPD M2M, VOICE PRIVACY, and AT&T DIRECT BILL.
Hey, we’re not picking on the iPhone, by the way. (If we wanted to do that we’d link to all these 300-page, $500 bills: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 
All the carriers and all the smartphones are about the same!
We did some of our own experiments a while back. We searched and search and snuck onto a secret carrier plan that they don’t even advertise or offer any more (we tried to re-order it last week, and it had gone up by $10). But the plan was really unique: we bought our own smartphone devices off of Ebay so we wouldn’t have to sign a contract, we found a plan we could add to it that would not require a new contract and that would come with zero voice minutes — the minimalist possible plan! We searched and searched and only one of the four big carriers had such a plan, but we got it.
We got a Sidekick “unlimited” plan for $29.99/month and a Blackberry “unlimited” plan for $29.99/month…and they both keep coming to us each month as $37.57. Hmm….
Peeky blogs and communities
Lots of enthusiastic Peeksters are setting up their own discussions about Peek. More power to them!
In fact, our geeky Peeksters in the company have a blog called Geeky Peek.
Le Journal de Peek is an interesting blog with some tips for doing cool stuff with Peek — like checking the weather map or seeing who’s in your office.
Peek eMail Blog has some pretty good tips and tricks for getting going with POP accounts and even Twitter.
There is also a new forum and discussion site that we got an email about yesterday: PeekUser.com. We’ll make sure to hunt around on there for un-answered questions and see if we can help out. Funnily enough, we have been planning our own new discussion forum pretty soon….so stay tuned.
Update: Peek Performance is also a pretty good blog about Peek. Thanks for pointing it out!
Peeksters everywhere
Hello there Peeksters everywhere!
You super-secret-special-offer-getters from coast to coast, you.
People are Peeking and you could be too! All three colors are in stock at a local Target.
Buy a Peek today?
If you bought a Peek today, thanks. If you are trying to get it going this afternoon….err, sorry. We are having some activation problems this afternoon with new Peeks. You can’t get past the email/password screen. It’s related to some security we implemented overnight on the network. Whoops! It should be resolved in a couple of hours.
Feel free to call 877 677 PEEK if you want real time updates from us. — 5:24pm EDT
Update at 6:09pm EDT: all clear. Fixed. Sorry about that! Folks had difficulties registering their newly bought Peeks for a few hours there.
Here is the Peek system status page where we’ll post alerts in the future. If there is an alert affecting you, we’ll always email you directly to let you know as soon as we hear. And you can always call us during our 7am-7pm care hours at 877 677 PEEK.
Getting yourself a Peek amid the (gulp) sellouts
Peek is available at 90% plus of the Target stores. If you go to one and they don’t have any, ask them to check their little handheld computer. Most of the ones we’ve checked out have Peeks set up or worst case in the back room.
Some stores might be sold out…. we’re working on getting more there soon.
Our website is currently sold out too, and we’ll be getting more there in the next couple of days.
Target.com was supposed to list Peeks on there today, but they waited another day.
Sorry it’s so tough to get a Peek! I guess this means you like us We promise not to let this turn into a Nintendo Wii situation. Promise!
Start of the Peek movement: today, everywhere
Monday is the big day. Peek is on sale at Target stores nationwide. About 90% of the 1600 stores will have Peeks tomorrow. Get in there and ask for us by name!
As for all you super secret special deal hunters. Remember the details on the deal (email us if you want a reminder on the super secret details).
Apparently some of you went commando-style into Targets and sweet-talked their staff into selling them to you before official kickoff on Monday! Peek was meant to be democratic and accessible to all, so it’s only fitting that you set Peek free.
Peeksters are already mailing in their pics…
A Peekster from Tennessee
Update (more Peeksters)
Ohio
Florida
Connecticut
Brooklyn
East Coast somewhere
Do one thing and do it well
What does this Fiat have to do with Peek?
We made Peek to be easy, accessible, usable, grab-it-and-go, and to us that meant focus, focus, focus! Let’s make it do email — that’s what’s important.
And get rid of all the other junk because
a) it’s distracting to us: why sit in meetings discussing alarm clocks and video players when that isn’t why people buy Peeks?
b) it’s distracting to Peeksters: why make something where it’s even possible to be lost? We’re pretty sure that we’re not the only ones who’ve gotten lost in some long menu somewhere and gotten home late for dinner.
c) it’s distracting to journalists and retailers and all the “marketing” types: please, we don’t want to tell you about the three different ringers for the alarm clock. We should be talking about how awesome mobile email is!
d) it’s distracting to shoppers (soon-to-be-Peeksters): “Hmm, is this meant to be an iPhone-killer?” No, no, no! This is nothing like that…there isn’t even a phone in there
See? Easy. You get it.
But some people hear us say all this, and nod like they get it. And then they say….something like, “Ahhh, Peek does one thing and it does it well”.
It depends on what you mean by that, you see. For us, we actually mean make it really easy and usable and accessible.
To some people, it means “OK, dump the phone thing but make this thing an email hot rod like nothing we’ve ever seen!!!”
Ahem.
Peek is no hot rod. We think Peek is really stylish and elegant — so it’s not quite a clunky, old Fiat either, but maybe you see what we’re getting at with that picture up there.
There is a special lovely something to those old cars. They get you around. They are compact. They don’t waste an inch. Don’t waste a gallon. There is an economy of style.
So, yeah, Peek does one thing well…
It’s not for corporate types, and it’s not for gearheads. It’s for normal people, like you!
He had us at hello. David Pogue did a couple of segments on CNBC showing off Peek this week — we think he might understand us better than we understand us. It can only be true love.
You can watch Power Lunch or you can watch Your Digital Life. Or you can see the version of the segment they did for the New York Times videos. (It has a nifty behind-the-scenes thing going on.)
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