We had another play with Dell's Streak after its Australian pricing was announced and came away convinced it will usher in a new era of giant phones, like those of the 1970s.
Is that my giant phone ringing?It's been widely labelled as a smallish tablet, a phone & web browsing device that sits somewhere between an iPhone and an iPad. And yesterday, Dell announced its availability in Australia from October, with Optus pricing of $0 upfront on an AUD$59 Cap or $649 standalone.
But after another look at the Dell Streak today, it's obvious that, even with a large screen of 5in, it's not significantly harder to accommodate in your daily life than an iPhone 4, which has a 3.5in screen. Unlike the iPad, which needs its own special parking wherever you take it, the Streak can easily fit into jacket pocket. It really
is just a bigger-than-normal Android phone.
In fact, we're convinced the Streak will herald a new era of giant phones. We'll carry them and coddle them just like our parents did the first giant mobile bricks in the 1970s. Why? Because a screen of 5in seems to be the true threshold for enjoyable and uncrippled mobile web surfing. The photos below show how websites like the Bureau of Meteorology and the Sydney Morning Herald appear on it - in full, as they do on a normal computer screen.
All of BOM fits on the screen, at a thoroughly legible size.
Blow up the text for even greater clarity.
No need to read the mobile versions of sites like the SMH, as the real thing works fine.
The Streak's Snapdragon processor easily crunches videos.
YouTube seems perfect for this device.
Oh, and it's a phone!
The Streak (middle) with a Blackberry and iPadPuzzlingly, the Streak will ship with the dated 1.6 version of Android, but Dell say an update to 2.2 will be made available later this year. If you like to surf the web on your mobile, just 1.5 inches of extra screen real estate make all the difference.
