I must admit, after playing around with quite a few android devices out in the wild at the moment, I wasn’t THAT excited when the Dell Streak arrived at my door. Sure, it has a capacitive touch screen, 1GHZ Snapdragon CPU, but Android 1.6? Granted, Dell has provided a custom home experience that does feel more like a WeTab type of interface.
I was pleasantly surprised at how fast and smooth this device feels compared to other devices. The Archos 7 Home Tablet feels like it was made in the 1960’s compared to using this. Having said that, it does not play .AVI or other formats so no movie watching straight out of the box.
A summary of what I really liked about the Dell Streak:
1. The UI is smooth and the capacitive touch screen allows for multi touch.
2. Unlike the Archos 7 Home Tablet, it comes with the Android Market!
3. The Dell UI does feel more intuitive than most alternative home configs out there.
4. ScummVM plays full screen with sound!
5. Youtube plays full screen with sound out of the box!
Cons:
1. This might not be a big one for most, but for me it’s really big… Youtube doesn’t allow you to log in with your YouTube account. It connects you to your google/gmail account and doesn’t allow you to change. My Subscriptions and favourites are lost.
2. Is it a phone or is it a tablet? I can’t quite figure this out.
3. It runs Android 1.6 :’( – NOTE: there is talk of a 2.2 upgrade later this year.
4. If you are thinking of using it as a phone, it is too big. Period. Are you really going to hold this thing next to your head when someone is calling? It reminds me of a scene from “Trigger Happy TV” in the Library.
If this device was available last year about this time it would have made a killing! Android 1.6, 5″ display… all brilliant for 2009. Unfortunately we are in 2010 and the IPad and IPhone 4 is what you need to compete with for a price tag of around £399 (ouch)!
All things aside, the device definitely bridges the Smartphone/Tablet gap. I am just a little unsure of who the target market would be. Let’s wait and see!
