We’ve talked a lot here about Dell Streak, the 5 inch tablet, that already sells in UK but hasn’t appeared yet in US. I say yet, because starting today we know when it’s gonna land here and at what price point. August 13th, 3 days from now, is the moment you’ll be able to get your 5 inch MID/tablet/smartphone from Dell‘s website only and the cost is 299 $ with a 2 year AT&T subsidized contract or 599$ unlocked, contract free. You can preorder it now and get a Plantronics Bluetooth headset for just 99 cents.

    While the unlocked price is on par with other similar products (the iPhone 4 sells unlocked for 600$), the subsidized price is a little too steep at 300 bucks. That doesn’t mean it’s not a worthy product, at least from hardware point of view, as the software is outdated: Android 1.6 OS, with a promise to upgrade to 2.2 later this year. Here are the main hardware specs highlighted for Dell Streak:

    • 5 inch 480 x 800 pixels capacitive touchscreen display, covered with Gorilla Glass scratch resistant layer
    • 1 GHz Snapdragon processor with 256 MB RAM
    • 2 GB internal storage + microSD card (supports up to 32 GB drives )
    • UMTS / GPRS / EDGE class and HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
    • 5MPx back camera and front-facing video-calls camera
    • Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.1
    • Android 1.6 OS
    • weighs 220 g (7.9 oz) and measures 152 x 78 x 10 mm (6 x 3.1 x 0.4 inches)
    • Charcoal color (more will be added at a later date)
    • Easily integrated social media apps: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube

    I’m curious how the Dell Streak will sell in the first month, but I have a hunch it won’t be as successful as the iPad (more than one million units sold in less than 30 days). The biggest problem I see with the Dell Streak is its lack of identity: it’s not a tablet, not really a MID and certainly not a smartphone  as the screen is too big. Anyway, we should thank Dell for bringing competition to the iPad (sort of).

    Finally Dell Streak comes to US

    Finally Dell Streak comes to US

    Here’s a short featured video with Dell Streak:

    Update: It seems that Dell has prepared a nasty surprise for us: the Streak will be SIM locked to AT&T, even the ‘unlocked’ version, so you can’t use your SIM card from another provider like Verizon and T-Mobile. That’s a pity as there’s no incentive to get the 550 $ unsubsidized version of Dell Streak.