It is rare when a product comes along and completely reinvents the way we already do something which is already simple in the first place. Email holds a special place in the world today. Everyone, with exception to the most staunch luddites, uses email to communicate. The written word is so deeply ingrained in the human animal as a primary and required form of communication that our most popular forms of getting out the word are either in visual or written form. We IM, SMS, and email all the time. Email is so pervasive, it almost hurts the brain to try and figure out how to make it easier.

Its not hard, however, to figure out how to make it more complicated. Convergence takes care of that, and what used to be one of the most beloved mobile messaging devices and an indispensable tool for the Federal government, the RIM Blackberry, has lost its way in a fight to remain relevant in a writhing sea of multi-functional nano devices which can play music, watch TV, fetch email from several accounts, browse the web, pick your teeth after a fine meal, and, if you’re lucky, make a call or two. They have cute, cloying names like Bold, Storm, Chocolate, Shine, and Behold, and they all (at least according to the manufacturers) do everything better than the Apple iPhone.

Until now. I introduce to you the one and only Peek. Its not an iPhone. It doesn’t play music. It doesn’t organize your life. Its not designed to make phone calls. Its more like 2G then 3G or 4G. It doesn’t sport a touchscreen, have any number of GBs of storage space, can’t find out where you are because it doesn’t do GPS, and doesn’t even take pictures. What it does do, and quite well, is email. If you can recall back to the mid-90′s when RIM’s Blackberry devices was just becoming hot with its two-way pager service on its neato 850/950 models then you might also recall that they weren’t phones back then. Not until 2001 did RIM add phone support.

The Peek brings back the concept of the old Blackberry and reboots it with a fresh, thin, clean, easy to use new device. For US$79.99 and US$20 a month you get unlimited wireless service which gives you access to up to three email accounts, unlimited SMS, and they’re adding features all the time. In the most recent update they added the SMS feature and the ability to view images attached to emails. My hope is that they add additional file types in the near future. Feature-wise, the interface is very clean. In fact, if you’re familiar with how the Blackberry works, you’ll be instantly at home on the Peek.

Setup of email accounts is very, very easy. The device itself has a number of configurations built into it, such as Gmail, AOL, NetZero, and many others. Just enter in the details and, if it recognizes the email address, it takes care of the rest. If you have your own mail server, just call up the service folk and they’ll set up the account for you. Word from their PR people is that they are working on adding Exchange access, as well. This should make some Crackberry addicts rather happy. I didn’t think to ask if they were also working on Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise account access, though.

The hardware itself is very well made. The device is nicely this and light. The screen is 320×240 and has excellent backlighting and color. There are some things which could be slightly improved. The thumbwheel could be a moved from the traditional side of the unit to the front middle, which would make it easier to use for lefties like me. The battery cover, which is nice and solid, would benefit from having a strengthened locking mechanism. One odd choice was the placement of the extended characters which are located above the numbers across the top of the keyboard. All of the keys are backlit, but the aforementioned characters are not, so you can see what they are in the dark.

There are also some things which the Peek developers could do to improve the interface. First, there are only three built-in color themes, none of which are particularly attractive, to choose from. There’s also not font control, which I’m assured by my PR contacts they are working on now. One thing which they could fix, however, is the status bar at the top of the screen. Its quite a bit taller than it needs to be. If they could trim it down and modernize the icons and status elements there would be more room on the display for email. It would also be nice if there was user control over the colors.

The Peek is one of the nicest, simplest, cleanest devices to come out in a long time. It fills a hole which used to be filled quite nicely but has become ridiculously overwrought. It also fills the gap which the costly iPhone has created. Some people just want a simple phone to make calls a a nice way to access their email on the go. The Peek has no contracts and it comes in a few colors. The Peek is a very elegantly simple solution to a problem which doesn’t need complex solutions, and I’m happy to have one. It very quickly became one of my most used devices and I don’t foresee a time when I stop using it.

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