Hands-On With Dell's Streak Android Device

adeelarshad82 writes "Dell Streak, the Android-based 5-inch tablet (which has also been called out as a smartphone) is set to ship starting in July, both from a US carrier and direct on Dell.com for $500. Even though Dell has not disclosed the name of the carrier, some experts believe that it will be AT&T because the Streak is a 3G GSM 850/1900 device and AT&T is the only major US carrier that supports those frequency bands. According to a hands-on, Streak is a sharp-looking device with a black front and candy-apple red back that unfortunately shows fingerprints easily. On the upside, Streak's curved body is comfortable to hold. Streak runs a customized version of Android 1.6, but Android aficionados will have to get used to the unusual button layout. Its 800x480-pixel screen makes images look tight, and web pages will benefit from the horizontal resolution. The 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, the same as in the HTC Incredible and Sprint EVO 4G, functions snappily. There's a 5-megapixel camera on the back, a VGA camera for video calling on the front, and a MicroSD memory card slot under the back cover."

Comments

This article is boss

[negRo_slim]

Can someone please quantify "sharp" for me?

Re:This article is boss

[goombah99]

Y'know sharp like the edges of a Archos MP3 brick when the ipod came out. Holding one of these huge things to your head to talk will have everyone laughing like it was an episode of Bean. This will get the brown Zune prize for 2010.

Android 1.6? Is this a joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on - how can anyone sell an Android 1.6 device with a straight face in this day and age?

No wonder it's going to AT&T. AT&T hates Android and so far has only carried the worst and most crippled Android devices on the market.

Re:Android 1.6? Is this a joke?

[Talez]

This is the problem with trying to faux-innovate by creating an "experience".

For starters, Dell is shit at it. Second of all, you spend so long tailoring it to the firmware version you started it on that it's now obsolete and the default experience is a million times better anyway.

IMHO Dell needs to differentiate themselves in two ways:

1) By a "build your own smartphone" model using a couple of different form factors (tablet, slider, flip) with commodity snap in parts that are user customizable (screen tech/screen size/flash space/CPU+GPU combo/camera) that would allow them to deliver any phone in any segment at any price point.
2) Keeping up with the latest version of Android and providing the latest default Android experience as soon as possible. Make a generic firmware, stuff it with all the drivers you might need for all of the hardware used in the different combinations and release it quick. Sell on volume, sell on having the latest and greatest Android features available to customers a week after the general release and laugh at HTC promising firmware updates at some undetermined point in the future.

If you give people what they want and quickly you won't have to differentiate yourself with all of this experience wank. You can just sell them whatever they want and sell them by the truckload because you're DELL. When people just want a laptop they jump on Dell's website, price one up, it's cheap as chips and they buy it. Just do the same damn thing with smartphones already.

Re:Android 1.6? Is this a joke?

[tftp]

Releasing a product in commercial space requires stability. Sure, you can't have everything in the release 1.0, but every release must be a solid product. If you look back, each DOS release was fine; most Windows releases were OK (as Windows goes,) and IIRC even OS/2 releases were reasonably mature.

The major point here is to avoid the upgrade treadmill. I can understand frequent upgrades if they are seamless. But in Android they are not. Each OEM has to customize a base Android system to their hardware, and a handheld thing can have 10-20 different hardware items to worry about - the CPU itself, the display controller, the touch controller, the battery charge controller, WiFi, Ethernet, BT, compass, GPS... so it's a lot of work to the OEM to upgrade from 1.x to 1.(x+1). If you make them do it often they just say "stuff it, we won't be upgrading anything" and then you are stuck. In my work I occasionally have to upgrade frameworks. Qt offers a great example, especially when 3.x to 4.x transition changed *everything* and required rewrite of major pieces of code. Such an upgrade is often out of consideration even - the library pieces then get checked in along with your sources, and that's that.

So IMO regardless of what Google wants to do, what they are doing is not working. Google people just don't understand what their releases are doing to the industry. Imagine yourself an OEM that plans a gizmo. If you pick Android you start development one day and never end, until the product is EOLed. That is hardly a winning strategy. If I were such an OEM I'd rather pick a no-name OS that at least allows me to build a product and let it be. If my product doesn't report its OS version I'm OK. If my product reports that it's Android x.y then it's already bad news - there is already a newer release by Google, and who will buy my gizmo then? Business-wise, Google is on a losing path here.

Besides, as far as Google is concerned, implementing the latest version isn't really their problem.

I'm afraid you are right and Googlers indeed harbor that foolish idea. But that very fact *is* their problem. They have enough cash to play ostrich for a few years, but the reality couldn't care less about what Google thinks. Reality deals with things that exist.

Re:Android 1.6? Is this a joke?

[beguyld]

Very good summary.

Quite likely the issue is that Google is a web company, and in that world new software is almost continuously rolled out.

So the decision makers don't have any person real-world experience with commercial devices containing firmware; which is very difficult to upgrade once it leaves the factory. (at least major version changes, for the reason you noted)

This actually makes me wonder if Meego will be a sleeper. Nokia IS a phone company, so they understand that world. Trolltech has been playing with real world customers in the embedded world for a long time.

Intel is in a different world, but I expect they are providing more funding than SW development. They will have decision making clout. But Intel is a hardware company, run by hardware engineers. And those guys think that once something goes out the door it's frozen forever. Very different then the Google web-based, "let's try this for a few hours in Ohio, and we can always roll it back if it doesn't work" way of thinking.

It's not so much about "thinking" but about one's own decades of personal experience, which affects how we see the world and what decisions we'll tend to make.

There are of course many factors which go into mass market acceptance, so I would not want to make any bets just yet about a dominant phone/tablet OS 5 years from now. But it will be interesting to watch.

Re:Android 1.6? Is this a joke?

[Wrath0fb0b]

By a "build your own smartphone" model using a couple of different form factors (tablet, slider, flip) with commodity snap in parts that are user customizable (screen tech/screen size/flash space/CPU+GPU combo/camera) that would allow them to deliver any phone in any segment at any price point.

Ever notice how phones and tablets tend to have SoC's from 6-12 months ago? Like the Snapdragon here when they've already got Snapdragon II running or the Droid/Pre/iPhone/Pod/Pad's A8 when the A9 has been out for a while and they are already flogging the A10 at Computex? A device that small has to be drawn out months in advance so all the components can be fabricated and any glitches in the assembly process ironed out. This isn't like plugging a PCI card into a motherboard -- almost every component is a custom part and every cubic millimeter of the device is taken.

Make a generic firmware, stuff it with all the drivers you might need for all of the hardware used in the different combinations and release it quick.

I don't know about the Android ecosystem but I used to be into WinMo hacking (before the birth of Android and the death of my free time )and this was straight impossible. Even the bootstrap sequence varied from phone to phone, as did vital kernel settings, radio settings and really just about everything. I would not be at all surprised if this was simply impossible.

Also, in the official world, you have to get validation from the OEM, the carriers and the regulatory agencies (if you touched the baseband) before pushing firmware. That alone takes time, plus they might bump it back to you if they don't like it.

Re:Android 1.6? Is this a joke?

[theridersofrohan]

I wonder where's that article about android fragmentation now? I remember comments claiming that talk of fragmentation is FUD!. How can you come up with an android 1.6 device in June 2010?

Bad Form Factor

[HandleMyBidness]

The picture in that article makes me think this is the exact wrong size for every use it's designed for, especially as a phone.

Re:Bad Form Factor

[Minwee]

The obvious way to improve it would be to move the microphone and speaker to the side, and maybe change the shape to be more like a taco and less like a phone book.

Side Talkin' never went out of style.

Re:Bad Form Factor

[FlyingBishop]

You can run C code with the NDK.

Of course, when people talk about Android fragmentation, they don't know it, but they're really talking about the NDK. If you stick to Java your program is fairly easy to keep working across versions. If you use the NDK, it's graphics programming in the late '90s again with a ton of different GPUs and odd CPU quirks to deal with.

Just what we need

[Anonymous Coward]

A phone with a pathetic screen resolution on a pathetic carrier with a dog-old version of Android.

I mean, I want an Android tablet, but I'm simply not settling for this.

Re:Just what we need

[Threni]

> There is no such thing as an Android Tablet. Google doesn't officially make an OS for tablets yet,

If someone puts Android on a tablet then at that point you can say that Google officially makes an OS for tablets. What Google intends to do, or where it expects an OS to run is neither here nor there.

Re:Just what we need

[shutdown -p now]

It's too large for a phone, but too small for a tablet. I don't know what niche it's supposed to take, because I don't see any I'd want to use it in.

Given that there are much more compelling Android offerings both in phone and in tablet space, I don't see why anyone would bother.

Does it come with...

[dustin_0099]

a free Xbox 1 controller?

Comparison with the EVO

[pwnies]

Just got the EVO today, and while it isn't as large as the Dell Streak, it is significantly larger than most smartphones in its class. One of the things I noticed was that although it's a joy to type on, it isn't so nice holding it up to your ear. It feels bulky holding it up against your head - however I can still use a headset and keep the device in my pocket. The significantly larger size of Dell means that a.) I wont be able to keep it up to my head without it feeling awkward, and b.) I wont be able to keep it in my pocket and use a headset. I can't see a reason to want a device of this size. It's at the perfectly wrong size, in fact.

What's the correct form factor for this niche?

[Nemilar]

I've seen a few devices of this size (the Archos 7 comes to mind; and I've seen them on the internet, not in person, mind you) and I think it's interesting to watch the industry try to figure out the correct form factor for this new niche that is emerging. Obviously it is going to be something larger than a cellphone and smaller than a laptop -- but what, exactly?

This Dell Streak, I think, is the exact wrong size. It's quite a bit larger than a phone, and it doesn't look like something that you want to carry around all day in your pant pocket. One of the reason cellphones have become so popular is because they are so small (and light-weight). Remember that for several years, the major thing about cellphones is that they were getting smaller and smaller? Compare a phone from, say, 2000, with a phone from today. Why would anyone want to reverse direction on that? It's too large for a phone.

On the opposite end, it looks too small to do any actual work. A netbook-sized screen is good for emails and browsing, but it's not very useful for doing serious business. And this thing is much smaller than a netbook. I don't think that's the aim, of course -- I think it's more aimed to the niche that the iPod targets; gaming, "always-on" style internet access, etc.. But I have to wonder if the device is too small for these things, as well. I think it might very well be.

But the overwhelming thing we seem to be seeing is that there are plethora of devices being released, each being in some significant way different from the next; companies are trying to find out what consumers want in a device like this. Maybe Apple has proven it with the iPad, given its popularity; they did that with the iPod, and now the market is full of MP3 players which are essentially iPod clones. But remember when MP3 players were first coming to market, there were many different form factors, many different storage devices (Sony had that thing with the mini CDs, for example), until it became clear what consumers want. The same thing should/will happen here; and I believe it's quite possible it's already happened with the iPad, and anyone making anything substantially different will wind up falling behind.