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Hands-On With Dell's Streak Android Device

Posted by timothy on from the 5-inch-abs dept.

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."

8 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Android 1.6? Is this a joke? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Android 1.6? Is this a joke? by Talez · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Android 1.6? Is this a joke? by tftp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Bad Form Factor by HandleMyBidness · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Bad Form Factor by FlyingBishop · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  3. Just what we need by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Just what we need by Threni · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > 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.

  4. Does it come with... by dustin_0099 · · Score: 5, Funny

    a free Xbox 1 controller?