The TwitterPeek: Interesting Device or Epic Fail?
On 11/03/2009, Peek released a new single-purpose device named the TwitterPeek Mobile. This device follows after the two other Peek devices, Peek Pronto and the Peek Classic, both centered around texting and e-mail. The service was $15.00 dollars a month or you could buy the Peek Pronto for $300.00 for lifetime service. The TwitterPeek is based around Twitter.com, the popular micro-blogging service that seems to be all the rage. The TwitterPeek is going for $99.00 with six months of service or $199.00 for lifetime service. This handheld sounds very neat and handy, but is it really worth it? Especially with all of the applications for Twitter on many different phones. Here are the good and bad features of the TwitterPeek.
The Good
- Ability to access Twitter from almost anywhere.
- No contract
- Great QWERTY keyboard.
- Has almost all the features of the Twitter Website.
- Able to view pictures (TwitPic only)
The Bad
- Doesn't display full 140 character tweet.
- Horrible text-only browser which is slow.
- Only loads pictures from TwitPic, no other Twitter photo service.
- Doesn't support multiple accounts
- Takes forever to load new tweets.
- Extremely expensive for what it does.
As you can see here, the bad outweighs the good. Peek had a great idea in mind, but they came far from perfection. The TwitterPeek seems like a interesting little gadget, but is it really worth your money?
Follow me on Twitter! twitter.com/Parlof96
Parker Loflin Nov 10, 2009 at 5:08 PM
Reader Comments (3)
The made a Peek device for Ping.fm last year, and it was fail. It looked exactly like this.
It just seems that the Twitter Peek isn't featured enough to call itself a Twitter only device that people would really crave. It doesn't have support for any photo service other than TwitPic. As you mentioned, it doesn't allow you to load links other than in an all text, slow browser. I'm still on the fence about this device. I also feel the navigation system could be better than just the scroll wheel on the side and a back button. I feel a second gen version of this device could be successful but this one is too flawed. Someone shouldn't have to think this much to decide whether or not they like this device, you know what I mean? It should be a no-brainer if it was truly going to be a successful Twitter specific device.
This might be a good idea for parents that trusted a child with a cell phone and got burned by said child over texting resulting in a huge bill. But the subscription thing is crazy. Maybe one that just works on wifi would be okay. Something like a dumb iPod Touch.