Dell’s new 5-inch Streak is a hotly-anticipated Android device, combining the functionality of a smartphone, a tablet PC, a digital camera and a satnav into a sleek, sexy package that’s thinner than many of the current generation of handsets. Whisper it quietly, but there’s there’s even a few surprises in there to give the almighty Apple iPad a run for its money.
Dell is adamant that the Streak is a tablet, but at 5-inches is the display too small to fulfill what’s expected of a tablet? And is it to big to be taken seriously as a smartphone?
The display is a beauty. With a resolution of 480×800 this scratch resistant LCD is bright and vibrant, while still seeming spacious enough to find a home for all your widgets and apps and still have room for the odd photo frame. The capacitive multi-touch screen isn’t quite as fluid as either the HTC Desire or the iPad, but is still very responsive and accurate when web-surfing, using apps and scrolling through the homescreens on the device.
Dell Steak: Operating system and interface
The Streak runs on Android 1.6 (although an update to 2.2 is due this year) and initially that seems like a missed step. This means limited use of the voice-to-text functionality and no live wallpapers like on the Google Nexus One. However Dell has applied a lovely skin to 1.6. It’s intuitive, logical, snappy and a real pleasure to use. Android is helped along in no small measure by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor, which adds a real zip to proceedings when opening apps and whizzing through homescreens. It supports multitasking too.
Handy little shortcuts take you where you need to be quickly, with tabs allowing you to access all of your homescreens with one touch, as well as your most-used apps and connectivity options.
Bespoke widgets, including Facebook and Twitter widgets sit alongside each other nicely, offering live feeds and status updates across both platforms.
Although it doesn’t sync the accounts, when you update Facebook via the widgets, it prompts if you’d like to send it to Twitter too, and vice versa. Push email is basic, but very simple to set up.
Dell Streak: Calling and the internet
The Streak may be shaped like a tablet, but for all intents and purposes, it is a modern day smartphone. Call quality is excellent, but when emailing and texting, finding a natural typing grip is problematic – we found two-handed landscape worked best. The keyboard fine, although there’s no built-in dictionary to correct mistakes.
Browsing is a pleasant, working through pages in portrait mode is the preferred grip, especially on blogs and sites like Twitter. The Android WebKit browser is pretty good too, but Firefox would have been available on Android 2.1. As a web tablet it’s great. The pinch-to-zoom multitouch works well, while pages and images render quickly thanks to the 1Ghz processor, but Dell has really missed a trick by leaving Flash off the device.
Dell Streak: Multimedia
One of the areas where the Dell Streak really surprised us, is the camera. It’s got a 5-megapixel lens with a dual flash that produces quite brilliant results. Images are clear and sharp, vibrant and colourful with a fantastic auto focus that brought us some brilliant foregrounds and wonderfully soft backgrounds. There’s also a multitude of shooting and editing options to customise your photo too. Images even look great blown up on a HD TV.
You also get a VGA video camera and, iPhone owners look away now, a front-loaded webcam, which is great for blogging. Sadly no app exists within Android to make use of video calling yet, like Apple’s FaceTime.
The music player interface is a little sluggish compared to the rest of the phone, and audio quality disappoints, however the 5-inch screen is great for video playback.
Dell Streak: GPS and apps
GPS functionality is another win, thanks to the free turn-by-turn Google navigation app, which transforms the device into a stand alone satnav. It works exceedingly well; the maps have useful layers, voice directions are accurate and clear, and a simple double tap on the screen takes you into Google Street View.
The Android Market looks great on the device, but while it’s getting better. it’s still a good few applications short of even coming close to iPhone or iPad.
At 15cm long it is bigger than smartphone rivals, but we didn’t find it a problem, especially when you consider the extra functionality you’re getting. And the on-board battery will last about a day.
Overall the Dell Streak is a very impressive device. It bridges the gap between smartphone and tablet wonderfully well, in fact we’d say it’s more of an iPhone rival than an iPad rival. It performs brilliantly in almost all areas, with a fine touchscreen and a great use of Android, but it really excels as a convergence gadget, with the satnav, smartphone, tablet and camera functionality offering single device solutions in all of those areas, while still slipping handily into the pocket.
The Dell Streak is available now from O2. Data only contracts (perfect if you’ve got a mobile phone and want to use it as a tablet) start at £25. Voice and data contracts start at £35 a month.
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