New Device : Peek Classic

Another week, another new device; this week it's the Peek Classic. Unlike most of my gadgets, this is a sole purpose device. The one function of the Peek is to retrieve email over a GSM network (T-Mobile in this case). The unit is comparable in size to a Blackberry (Or an iTouch as in the picture).

The pricing on this little device is what really sold me on it. The Classic version is available for $15 from Amazon, and service runs anywhere from $10 to $20 a month. This is all depending on what deal you happen to buy into. Granted, I purchased mine from craigslist (I get a good amount of gadgets from there) for $10.

Mail delivery isn't quite what I expected at first, it took anywhere from 5-10 minutes to get my test emails from myself; however, a quick look at the site made me realize I had the oldest possible version of the software (1.04). This version of the software does not support Push notifications, so once I send it into the very friendly guys at Peek; the delivery time should be vastly improved. (I apparently get a free month of service for doing so as well, so double bonus!)

I've had this for 2 days, and it's already becoming a device I use very often. The price is right, the device itself is well made, and most of all, it's terribly useful. All the trappings of something I'll use for a long time.

Straight Talk Undocumented functions

There are a few undocumented features about your recently purchased Straight Talk phone that you can take advantage of.

First, I give you your holy grail of getting actual email on your phone without logging into your mail from your browser.

yournumber@mypixmessages.com

That is your number without a leading 1.

This is the best location to send email to yourself, in terms of your airtime balance; it counts as a single text message (saving you valuable bandwidth if you are on the $30 plan). I have found no reasonable limit (Tested a 99kb Faq from gamefaqs.com). That said, it still DOES use your bandwidth; but you save the pain of having to use the phone's built in browser.

New Device: Straight Talk Samsung R451C

This phone is the one I replaced my Lg600G with. It's a bar phone with a slide keyboard, and much better service (Expanded on later).

All sorts of codes
*#1111# - Shows tons of parameters of your phone, cycle through with the up/down or volume keys

*#06# more parameters

I Was playing around with the codes and I managed to disable my prepaid service. This is the number I got from Customer service to remedy this problem.

6446868480539264896499X - Last digit withheld for the moment
2015270294987359720505X - Last digit withheld for the moment

More info to follow.

New Device: Net 10 LG600G

The fist addition to the new blog format is a device I've owned for quite a while, my old trust Net 10 LG600G.

LG600G Features

* VGA Camera
* Includes Bluetooth® Wireless Technology
* Enjoy the same low rate for every call -- local, long distance & roaming
* International Long Distance and Roaming calls
* Downloadable Ringtones, Graphics, News, Weather, Sports and more using Airtime Minutes.
* Hands-free Speaker
* Picture Messaging, Text Messaging
* Voicemail, Call Waiting, Caller ID
* Alarm Clock, Stop Watch, Calendar, Calculator, Games

This phone served me well for a long period of time, and I have no major qualms about it. Unfortunately, it's quite old. It's tiny 160 x 120 screen makes photo viewing a pain, Java performance is quite slow, and it's a flip phone. I personally dislike flip phones and much prefer bar style phones.


The Java on this phone is unrestricted; you can install almost any appropriately sized game. There are some issues with this however, the status bars at both the top and bottom do not go away while in an application. It's a minor annoyance, but can be a massive detriment in some games where vital information is displayed at either end of the screen. You can kind of see this in the picture on the left.

It's also quite easy to transfer .mid files onto the phone through a bluetooth connection from a PC. I got mine from vgmusic.com . Just be aware that you need to use small .mid as the more instruments in a piece make the sound much more distorted on the phone.

Images work in much the same way, you can pull them right off the images folder you see when you connect to your phone (Use the FTP setting).

This is probably the last you'll be hearing of this phone, as I'm going to use this phone for one thing, and one thing only in the future. My test bed for lowest common denominator for my Java games. More on that later.

Organization and New Directions

I started this blog a month and a half ago with my Lanyu E-Book. It was my intention to share any information I came across about it. Unfortunately, this Smartbook is dead. I've since replaced it with a standard American variation on the MenQ, the Delstar DS700. Easily available at Kmart for a substantial $150 (This is a book that at cost is $88). My suggestion is to wait till Kmart clears them out later this year. Avoid the Other netbook they sell (Archos?) it's even more janky than the Delstar for the same price.

Anyway, I'm going to fully clean up the tags over the next few days, so I can make finding all the gadgets much easier. Please bear with me, and enjoy the content I add.