Hasta La Gadget!

Dell’s puzzled the world for quite some time with its outlandish Mini 5 — at first glance it’s just another Android-based MID, but a quick fiddle with it reveals the full-fledged 3G phone inside. So will it fit in a pocket? Can we carry it around like a normal phone? Is this the future form factor that will bring the ultimate balance between portability and practicality? With such heavy dose of curiosity, we eventually traveled all the way to Shenzhen literally just to grab this prototype. Now, before you read on, do bear in mind that some of its features — especially the OS — may not make it to the final design when it comes out later this year, nor do we know what stage this prototype was at. We good? OK.

Let’s start with the basics: the main specs on our unit include Android 1.6 (which will definitely be obsolete for the final product), five-inch 800 x 480 capacitive touchscreen, Snapdragon QSD8250 chipset (with CPU clocked at 1GHz), Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and WCDMA radio. Sadly, we have no info on whether the Mini 5 will have other cellular radio options, but it wouldn’t hurt to send Dell a petition regarding this matter. For those who want the dimensions and weight in numbers, it’s about 152mm x 78mm x 10mm at 8 ounces (including the battery, which lasts for almost a day for normal usage on 3G). Memory-wise there’s 405MB RAM and 1.63GB of internal storage — a slight let-down for the latter, so let’s hope the retail unit will be given a more generous dose of silicon. You can add a microSD card next to the battery on the back, but it appears that the mysterious second card slot we saw in the earlier teardown only gave us false hope — we couldn’t find a way to get to it without prying open the housing. Connection to your computer relies on a proprietary port — similar but slightly larger than the iPod’s — to USB cable, which may suggest that we will see some more peripherals made for the Mini 5 and its future siblings.

Continue reading Dell Mini 5 prototype impressions

Dell Mini 5 prototype impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lusting for more Android love from Motorola? Then you should start searching for a Chinese soulmate. We’ve been told that this ￥5,680 ($830) XT800 dual-SIM (one CDMA and one GSM) smartphone had been out for just a few days in Shenzhen — right before the country shuts down for Chinese New Year on Sunday. Packing the same OMAP3430 core used by the Droid and Milestone, both the 2.0.1 firmware and a 720p sample video we watched were running smoothly on the lovely 3.7-inch 854×480 screen. The rubberized battery cover felt nice in our palm, too, but enough with the talking — go gorge yourselves on the gallery pics, won’t you?

Motorola XT800 Android touchscreen phone hands-on in Shenzhen originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony Ericsson Xperia X2a appears on US site screaming ‘I’m coming!’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Roland, who can’t wait to get his recently relocated sister some sort of phone with Skype capabilities.

“My sister recently moved to Belgium. She has access to WiFi at home, so I’d like to send her a mobile phone that can run a Skype client. Requirements are WiFi, can work on Belgian / European carriers, runs Skype, and has excellent battery life. Anyone have any suggestions?”

There’s nothing worse than not being able to communicate with someone when you desperately need to, so we’re hoping that our readers across the pond will be able to chime in here with a little advice. If you’ve got something productive to add, drop it down in comments below!

Ask Engadget: Best Skype phone for Europe? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Dell Mini 3i unboxed in China, capacitive stylus included

Filed under: Cellphones

Dell Mini 3i unboxed in China, capacitive stylus included originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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