Since some time 1&1 has a new product in their portfolio. So-called “Pocket Web” was developed by IXI Mobile, it known also as Ogo. It is a mobile device, some kind of PDA with QWERTY-Keyboard. This device is designed for mobile Internet (GPRS) and e-mail-push services. For 10€ monthly you can use Internet on this device without limitations.
It sounds very interesting and I was ready to forgive it such things as display with “only” 4000 colours, limiting of email push-services for only one 1&1 or Web.de email account and slow GPRS-connection, but I found out from article about Pocket Web on www.onlinekosten.de that accumulator power of Pocket Web ranges less than for 4 hours. The next “surprise” was absence of ICQ/AOL/MSN/Yahoo messenger in German version of the device, although this feature is present in Ogo-devices in other countries. I think that some people are afraid that messenger could be a great competitor for sms-service and there are right, because of price for one message with 160 characters.