At the back of last year, FON talked about launching a €99 Peek to the European market (via a deal with Spotnik, a new Europe wide mobile network), which we covered here.  Except everything then went very quiet.  Then, when discussing it with Ben Smith of The Really Mobile Project a few weeks back, we realised it was no longer on the FON website anymore.

Well, Peek and Spotnik have announced it’s finally available, and still at that €99 initial price.  This includes 6-months of European wide GSM roaming (ie no roaming data fees for anywhere in Europe), and will then cost €19.99 per month (or €49.99 if you pay per quarter, or best value €159.99 per year if you pay annually).  You’ll be able to link it to 5 email accounts and it’s available now in either Charcoal (Grey) or Pink (Red).

The website says “Buy Now”, although we should point out that the original plan was to charge around €12.90 a month for the service, but this appears to now be €19.99.

Please note although there may be some similar investments / directors behind Spotnik and FON, it appears that at this stage, it’s only available from Spotnik, and not from FON themselves.

For an email only device, but with the ability to handle 5 email accounts, and have no additional costs over the initial 6 month period, I still think that the €99 device is an interesting one.  As I said before; hand one to your child about to go travelling for the summer and you can keep in touch without costing them anything; use it on business to keep up with your email without incurring massive mobile roaming data bills (in fact, if you use the Pibbix voicemail service, you could leave your “normal” phone turned off, and receive your voicemails on this device for free whilst travelling…)

For (some) more information, head to the Spotnik Peek website, and see here for our article on Pibbix.

Although only a rumour at this stage, the PeekFON (which we first covered here) currently offers access to email across Europe without paying roaming fees, and FON have stated they hope to bring web browsing and Twitter support to the device too.  However, what’s interesting is that Peek themselves have recently worked on a Facebook application (currently in beta) for their US devices.  It’s likely this may also be available on the PeekFON (there’s no reason why not, and it may help promote the device further).

Also, in the article we’ve already linked to, we indicated the Peek Twitter-only device could not access twitpic, or any other URLs within tweets, both points which we understand are not true, and the device is actually slightly more feature rich than many people give it credit for.  The Twitter-only device is still US-only, whereas the PeekFON will be available here for sale for €99 (which includes 6 months pan-European email, and then the device is €12.90 per month, although no long term contract is required); although as of today, it’s still a pre-register page.

Interestingly, it’s looks like this is actually not a “real” application for the device.  The application is actually a Facebook application, and seems to offer the ability to publish new information to your facebook account via a dedicated email address (so you simply send out emails from the Peek device), and equally it will collect the content from your news feed and regularly email that to your device.  In which case, even more reason to hope this becomes available for the PeekFON for Europe too.

If FON are able to offer a range of facilities on the device, then this will offer a greater range of services than just email, and then the international traveller will be well prepared with a single device.

The Peek email only device has been quite popular in the US since it launched (and in fact, they now also have a Twitter only device too, which unlike some of the reviews does include Twitpic support and the ability to open links, but not much else).  However, FON, another company I have been a supporter of with their Wi-Fi sharing network, have now announced they will be selling the PeekFON with European GPRS roaming from this month (although not shipping until next month).

The device will go on sale tomorrow (Tuesday 15th) for €99, and that will include 6 months of European GPRS roaming to allow you access to your email anywhere where the device can get a working mobile phone signal.  After that, it’s €12.90 per month, and there is no cancellation policy, so no long term contract to worry about either.

For now, the device is an email-only device (although with a full QWERTY keyboard, that’s still going to be a popular device), and in time, FON hope to add web browsing and Twitter support too.

This device doesn’t use the FON Wi-Fi Hotspot technology at all, but has been launched as a complimentary product; if it supports your email service provider (it’s not yet clear whether this will use your existing email provider, or require you to use a dedicated email address), then this does look an interesting device for the reguar traveller, especially with that lack of roaming costs across Europe; imagine being on holiday, or on a business trip, and still be able to keep up with all your email without fear of “bill shock”; an even better proposition when they are able to add twitter and web browsing support.

Certainly, the Peek device in the US allows access to up to 2 email accounts, and that includes Google Mail, Windows Live Hotmail, AOL, and Yahoo!, so assuming that the software inside is similar, then this European device should also support a variety of email accounts.  It will feature a 2.5″ screen, a scroll wheel (and back button) on the side, and the QWERTY keyboard.  It’s roughly 4″ x 2.7″ x 0.4″ and weighs around 100 grams, and in essence, is similar to the early BlackBerry device in the sense that it is a data only device.  It seems to have a total of 16MB of Flash, of which 8MB is allocated to the OS, and 8MB for email data.  It’s said in the US to manage 4  to 5 days between charges (wow, that’s so much better than most mobile phones!) and a recharge takes around 2 hours.  It should support blinking LED, ringing and vibrate to alert you to new email.

Finally, it appears to be able to view JPG attachments, but not anything else; there’s a second device in the US that supports 5 email accounts, push email, sending SMSes, and PDF & DOC support as well as JPG attachments, but I don’t think this is the device being targetted in Europe right now, although it’s not clear.

FON have announced that the mobile data will be provided by Europe’s first pan-European MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator), Spotnik.

Obviously, for those with corporate BlackBerry devices (and others who don’t actually pay the bill for mobile data roaming) this will not be popular, but for the rest of us, it’s certainly a device to consider.  Imagine letting your elder kids go off travelling around Europe for 6 months knowing that they can keep in contact with you…

Personally, I think devices that offer full European roaming built into the device are going to sell well as niche devices; in that respect this device is similar to the Amazon Kindle (which features even greater worldwide coverage), and although many people will not want or need this device (preferring to either pay the roaming charges, or will swap a local country SIM into their phone), for some people this offers a very cheap way of getting access to email and twitter (once supported) across Europe, and for that requirements, we recommend you at least look at this device…

We’ll publish more on this, including links to purchasing it once they go live, but for now, keep an eye on the FON website…