NEW YORK — It’s hard to remember now, but the first BlackBerry devices weren’t phones. They were two-way e-mail pagers that couldn’t be used for calls. Now, a New York-based startup is betting it can fill the niche the BlackBerry abandoned. It has made a sleek, $100 e-mail pager called the Peek that hits Target Corp. stores Monday.
The Peek does e-mail and nothing more: no phone calls, no Web surfing, no camera. The service fee is $20 a month, with no contract. Conscious minimalism is rare in gadgets, and usually welcome. The tablet, 4 inches tall by 2.7 inches wide, is covered with rubber on the front and metal on the back. It has a full-alphabet keyboard with generous spacing between the keys, which are backlit, and the color screen is sharp and relatively large, with a 2.5-inch diagonal. The Associated Press
