About a month and a half ago, Dell announced their first phone, the Mini 3i, and it’s fair to say that it left me a little, er, underwhelmed. It wasn’t as exciting as I expected, although I did like the copper back plate on it. So, I filed it away in my subconscious, not really thinking about it, and hoping Dell (whose PCs I happen to love, by the way) would announce something a bit more exciting.
And then, today, I saw a story on Engadget Mobile, about the Dell Streak, a Mobile Internet Device running on Android. All I can say is that I had a weird existential moment where I realised something important, and I’ll now recreate my internal dialogue as I looked at the photos of it: “Oh, look a Mobile Internet Device, cor, it’s got a big screen, hasn’t… wait, is that a phone dialler? Oh dear god, it is, the Dell Streak’s an actual phone as well, holy monkeys, it’s a mobile phone with a 5 inch screen!”
Yep, what you are looking at here is something that’s being marketed as a Mobile Internet Device, but if it’s got a phone dialler (which it has, you can see it in the pics), then it’s a smartphone.
A big smartphone. No bigger than that. Take another look at the pic on this blog post, and see the little hand sneaking into the bottom left hand corner. The Dell Streak is BIG. I mean, the screen on the damn thing is 5 inches across! That’s not all, though, because the screen is also capacitive, and supports multitouch gestures like that old chestnut, the famous “pinchy movement what zooms in on stuff”. You get a decent camera, too, since the Dell Streak’s got a 5MP shooter built in, which also comes with flash and autofocus. In fact, the only thing that’s not clear from the pics and video of it is what processor it’s running, although, I have to admit, it doesn’t seem to be running smooth enough for it to be a Snapdragon.
Oh yes, didn’t I mention there’s video footage of it in action? Well, feast your eyes:
Good god, that thing’s immense! Now, I know I like big phones, but really… that’s just too vast, even for me. I’d still have the HTC HD2 over that, any day, as much as I love Dell hardware (seriously, both my PCs are Dells). Y’see, while the HD2 has a massive screen, it’s not a massive phone. Physically, it’s not that much bigger than an iPhone or an HTC Hero, but it does a very clever thing by not having a very big bezel round the screen. So, the end result is a phone that’s nearly all screen, that isn’t physically much bigger than its rivals.
Now, look at the Dell again. Much bigger fascia around the screen, and therefore, a much bigger phone. Although, it has to be said, it’s surprisingly slim. So, it’s basically the Godzilla of the phone world, if Godzilla had been on a diet. Or, it’s iguana-based ‘98 Godzilla, as opposed to the original fat guy in a rubber suit (alright, that’s a stupid analogy, but go with it).
So, do I want to get my hands on one? You’re damn right I do! But would I want to use one, day to day? Er, I’m not sure, I reckon it might even be too big a phone for me…
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