Not content with Apple letting the iPad and iPhone dominate the world, Dell dropped by today to give us a brief hands-on with its new portable computer and mobile phone, the 5-inch Dell Streak.
Different from any of Dell’s current offerings, the Streak is a 5-inch touchscreen device running Android OS. Powered by the same 1GHz Snapdragon processor found in the HTC Desire and HD2, the Streak is quite fast.
Dell has equipped this massive screen with a 800×480 screen resolution making it excellent for multimedia. We certainly liked watching the videos we saw on it while we had it (which wasn’t for very long).
Dell call it a tablet. We call it a smartphone. You be the judge.
The Streak features Bluetooth, WiFi, a rear 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, and a front-facing VGA camera to make video calling possible. The touchscreen was quite responsive and we noticed multitouch was enabled.
While you might think the 5-inch screen is big – and it is – the Dell Streak is still quite pocketable.Weighing only 220 grams and 9.98mm thin, you can feel that Dell has attempted to squeeze as much tech as possible into a small package.
It might look like the Apple docking connector, but the Dell Streak has something else altogether.
We will say that we’re a little confused at Dell’s choice of a proprietary port on the handset. The charging and transfer port looks to be something of Dell’s own design while looking a lot like Apple’s docking connector. Considering that most handset manufacturers are opting for the microUSB format in new devices, this move to a different port comes as a bit of a surprise.
There have been rumours that the Streak is equipped with a tough and resistant screen made from “Gorilla Glass,” but with only a couple of units in the country right now, Dell didn’t let us play. Rest assured, when we get our own, we’ll be testing just how resistant the screen really is.
Sadly, no release is listed for Australia yet but we’re expecting it later this year.
