The tablet market is heating up and everyone is waiting for the arrival of a serious contender for the Apple iPad tablet computer. At this moment in time the Dell Streak seems to be the strongest contender. However, Research in Motion, the Canadian makers of the popular BlackBerrys are rumoured to be working on a rival of the iPad, dubbed the BlackPad and HP and Samsung are set to release their tablet computers by Christmas.
The main problem with the Dell Streak is that buyers might be confused as to what it is. A smartphone or a tablet PC? Regardless of what you wish to define it as the Streak incorporates some great features and the design is too interesting to ignore, even though at a price of £399 (02 Pay & Go)
The Dell Streak is some what smaller than the iPad, the difference between the two screen is a whole 4.7inches but in this smaller space Dell have managed to incorporate some extra capabilities such as a 5megapixel camera and memory expansion via the microSD slot.
The Dell Streak is 6 inches wide, 3.2 inches tall and 0.35 inches thick and as a result is almost a third of the size of an iPad, small enough to pack into your bag without feeling the weight.
The Streak’s touchscreen is covered in Gorilla Glass said to be indestructible. The tapered edges either side of the screen contain three soft keys, back, menu, home, an earpiece, microphone and a front-facing VGA camera.
On the other side the Streak features a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with an integrated LED flash. The back of the streak also features the battery which is removable and rechargeable. The battery compartment offers access to a SIM card slot and the included 16GB microSD memory card slot which can be swapped with a 32GB microSD.
Along the top of the Streak are buttons for volume, power and camera mode along with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. However, the power and camera buttons are situated next door to one another and are identical which can lead to some confusion as we found out. The bottom of the Streak offers a 30-pin connection similar to the iPad’s connection.
The Streak is relatively fast, powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 1 GHz processor, backed by 512MB RAM but ships with far outdated Android 1.6. Until Dell update their operating system, or you yourself update your Streak, features such as multi-tasking, multiple e-mail boxes, Flash video support are a sci-fi tale. Its single biggest loss is that the Streak does not feature the Android App market and as a result cannot compete with Apple’s App Store or Apple’s iTunes.
Apple’s agenda is that they want you to own an iPad for the house and an iPhone for the road. However, it seems that the confusion caused by the inability to differentiate what the Dell Streak is, is partly due to the fact that Dell are trying to combine both the in-home and on-road gadget into one. However, with rumours of the iPad Mini emerging the Dell Streak certainly has to step up a few gears in order to really give Apple a run for its money.