Unboxing the Peek

The Peek does one thing, and one thing only: e-mail… I’m not the target audience for the Peek – in fact I’m the antithesis of the target audience!

Yet I’m intrigued by this device. Why? Because it’s nicely designed, clean and simple. And, being cheap and contract-free, it’s just asking to be hacked – e-mail only, yeah right :)

As you’ll notice from my unboxing pictures and from these interesting teardown pictures, there’s a hidden SIM slot and a micro-USB port.

I tried different SIMs (the supplied T-Mobile SIM, a T-Mobile SIM with unlimited data, and an AT&T SIM with unlimited data), and the Peek reported an OK signal with each SIM, and as such, appears to be unlocked.

This doesn’t matter however, because the Peek doesn’t just connect to your e-mail server. Like the Sidekick, the device attempts to connect to a dedicated server, and this only works with the supplied T-Mobile SIM, and only works once you’ve activated your account, and only works if you’ve refilled your account.

I also tried using the supplied SIM in an unlocked phone without success – OK signal, but no voice, SMS, or data…

Finally, I connected the micro-USB port to a Mac running OS X (Leopard) and a PC running Windows XP. The Peek was not recognized in OS X, and was reported as an “Unknown Device” (VID=0x0000, PID=0x0000) in Windows.

So it looks like there’s more research to be done. I’ll keep you posted!