An unexpected glitch felled older models of Peek, the email-only device, and has forced the company to offer a free replacement upgrade to its users.
The outage, which started Thursday, bricked Peek models--the Pronto and Classic.
"Unfortunately, one of the connectivity providers we were using went down for good. That’s the bad news," wrote Peek CEO Amol Sarva on the company blog.
But Peek says its customers will gain from the incident. Peek is replacing existing bricked out devices with its latest model Peek 9.
Peek 9 offers push e-mail, access to Facebook, Twitter, weather and maps for $69 and a monthly service plan of $20. However, the device doesn't require long term contracts with the wireless carrier.
Peek's move to replace the older devices for free is smart but is also reminiscent of the Segway recall. In 2006, Segway recalled about 23,500 of its scooters because of a software glitch. The whole incident just served to underscore how few Segways had sold and how the product just didn't meet the expectations that users had for it.
Peek hasn't entirely lived up to its promise either. In 2008, Wired magazine named Peek the product of the year but since then the device has been overtaken by the rapid changes in the mobile business. Inexpensive smartphones now offer access to services such as Facebook and Twitter, while tablets like the iPad are available without any long-term contracts.
Peek isn't saying how many devices it will give out as part of the upgrade but for the few thousand Peek users, this should be welcome news.
See Also:
- Review: Peek Device Delivers Peak Email Performance And Not Much
- Peek Leak: Pronto Email Device is Twice as Fast
- Top 10 Products That Helped Us Forget 2008
- Official: Peek Pushes Pronto with Unlimited Texting
Photo: Peek (kukkurovaca/Flickr)
