I met with one of my friends earlier this afternoon and he showed me his latest gadget – the Dell Streak. It’s the first that I’ve seen here in the Philippines so I played around with it and took some photos. It runs Android 1.6 but I heard that it’s already upgradeable to Android 2.2 for some countries. Initially when I saw it I thought that it was just a small tablet device but apparently it also functions as a smart phone. I was a bit surprised when I saw my friend hold it up to his ear and talk to someone, haha! Anyway, here are some photos and more interesting tidbits:
The screen is around 5 inches, almost a third of the iPad. It’s made of gorilla glass so it’s pretty tough and sturdy. CNET reports that they carried the device in a messenger bag with keys and other loose elements and it wasn’t scratched or damaged at all.
Photo of the Dell Streak on top of the Apple iPad. The size difference is very noticeable.
Very thin which makes it look a lot like a smart phone. Wasn’t able to take a shot of it beside my iPhone 4 since I was using my phone to take the pictures, haha.
5 MP camera at the back and a front facing VGA camera at the front. Something that the iPad lacks. Engadget says that the photo quality is good. Unfortunately it can’t record 720p video, just 640×480.
Based on the reviews that I’ve read online, there are two major complaints by users. The first is the touchscreen keyboard. Bloggers and tech pundits are saying that because of the numeric keyboard on the right side of the screen you will have a hard time typing out long documents (e-mails, updates). The second issue is the battery life. Apparently at 75% screen brightness you’ll only have around 6 hours of battery life. If you don’t use it much it will last you through the day but if you’re a heavy user you’ll have to plug it in for a charge.
It’s not fair to compare the Streak to the iPad or the Samsung Galaxy Tablet. I think that the Dell Streak is more of a smart phone than a tablet because of the size and features. In the smart phone category it definitely will outshine a lot of the competition but as a tablet it just can’t match up to the bigger devices in the market.
Here’s a link to the complete features of the Dell Streak on GSM Arena.
PS: Thanks to Mr. Edwin Ngo for letting play around with the Dell Streak.
