Did you ever use a Peek, the dedicated email and Twitter machines that launched two years ago? Are you still using one? You may want to sit down for this news then.
Engadget is reporting that users of the handsets are claiming their Peek devices stopped working on January 30. Some users are understandably upset as they paid $299 for the device with “lifelong service” on the T-Mobile network.
Some users had received emails about the shutdown of service for Peek devices, but obviously not all of them got the memo.
Peek’s CEO, Amol Sarva, made a statement telling customers that the devices have been abandoned. They are “seriously old” after all since two years is a long time in Internet years.
To lessen the pain for those who paid $299, users still got 28 months of quality service from a machine that could only send tweets. Those who were paying $19.95 a month for the service, however, must be feeling pretty silly now
The company, as their Web site indicates, is fully committed to their new “genius cloud” service instead of the hardware market.
Sarva explains that the company could not maintain the Peek network forever for just a few users. The adoption of their software by already established phone manufacturers has made the Peek-made device obsolete. They have no plans to offer a new device to replace the old defunct ones.
A somewhat happy end to this story, however, comes from The Verge who reports that Sarva is offering free Peek devices they have lying around to interested hackers. Sarva says that the notion of “a pre-built and tested portrait QWERTY device with a jog dial, QVGA display, ARMv7 processor, and a GSM radio is, in many ways, a hacker’s dream.” He’ll even throw in some tools to sweeten the deal.
Those interested should contact Sarva himself at [email protected]. He’ll hook you up with one of the company’s developers for a free Peek.