Hasta La Gadget!

So, plenty of Dell goodies to choose from right now, but if you’re a die hard Dell-making-mobiles follower, you’ve probably been pining for the Streak (previously known as the Mini 5) for much longer than is strictly healthy. What news for you? Well, the mini tablet is apparently supposed to be getting Android 2.1 in September. Unfortunately, there’s no update on that vague “summer” launch window we have for the actual device, so who knows how much time you’ll actually get to suffer without 2.1 holding you and telling you everything’s alright. Oh, and were you concerned for some reason that you wouldn’t be able to kit this thing out with accessories galore? We’re pretty sure the collection you’ll find in the gallery will alleviate all fears. You could do worse than a $55 spare battery, and the standard accessories are even pretty legit.

Dell Streak to bump up to Android 2.1 in September, hopefully shipping sometime before that originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 21:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whether it’s branded the Mini 5, the Streak, the Streak 5, or something else entirely, we can say with certainty that Dell’s going to be hitting the Android market hard in 2010 — but we didn’t realize it’d be hitting this hard. It looks like the company might be taking a tack similar to Google’s with the Nexus One, because a second variant of product code M01M just garnered FCC approval — this time featuring WCDMA Band IV in place of Bands II and V, which means it’ll work on T-Mobile’s airwaves instead of AT&T’s. In lieu of a carrier deal, could Dell be looking to blow this out on as many carriers as it possibly can? We hope so — as long as our wallets can stomach the unsubsidized hit.

Dell Mini 5 gets FCC approval again, this time with T-Mobile flavoring originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Occasionally we’ve had strangers — very likely non-Engadget readers — coming up to us and ask, “Sorry mate, but is that the iPad?” To which we reply, “No, it’s the Dell Mini 5.” This may sound like a silly boo-boo to make, but there is this common misconception of the iPad being just “a bigger iPhone” while not knowing how much bigger it is (despite our best effort). To clear this up once and for all, we’ve brought the two devices in question together — the Mini 5 / Streak smartphone on the left, and the iPad on the right. Now it’s up to you guys to spread the love.

As a bonus, we also threw in various phones — HTC HD mini, Nexus One, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, and HTC HD2 — to pile on top of Apple’s latest toy, just to kill the Sunday afternoon. No magical and revolutionary devices were harmed in the making of this article.

[Thanks for the toys, Chris and Andy]

Apple iPad vs. Dell Mini 5 / Streak… fight! (Bonus: smartphone pile-on!) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s no denying that the Mini 5 is real, but up until now, we’ve had to provide all of our own promotional material. At long last, it seems as if the suits in Round Rock are finally getting around to crafting the first advertisements for the upcoming slate, and while we knew about the 5-inch WVGA (800 x 480) touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash, capacitive touch front buttons, front-facing VGA camera (for video chatting) and the 30-pin docking connector, we weren’t aware of Dell’s plans to reveal a slew of vivacious color options. If this here flyer proves legitimate, we could eventually see the Mini 5 available in an array of premium finishes and hues (thanks, Design Studio!), and we’re hoping for a few different spec builds as well. So, are you opting for the pink, or are you crossing your fingers in hopes that Dell allows you to print that embarrassing shot of you and Mr. T on the rear of one?

Update: Oh, snap! We just landed a few more official slides from an internal Dell document, and it’s safe to say that the company is going to call this beauty the Streak. Or, at least that’s the internal codename. Better still, it looks as if it’ll launch with an Amazon content partnership, which will bring a Kindle e-book reader app, Amazon MP3, Amazon video streams and pretty much any other material that Amazon sells in digital form right to the slate. C’mon now — how’s about a ship date and a price?

Leaked Dell Streak flyer shows multitude of color options, confirmed specifications originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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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