In the event you\’ve been following the continued saga of Dell\’s Streak, you\’ve probably already read our review of O2 UK\’s version — thing is, the British perspective could be very different from the american one (we didn\’t see eye-to-eye through the War of 1812, as an example). For this reason, we needed to circle back now that the gargantuan Android beast is finally coming virtually a US release and get another quick take.
As a refresher, this thing matches or exceeds the specs you\’d anticipate finding on any modern high-end smartphone in most respects, starting with a 1GHz Snapdragon core, a 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, 850 / 1900MHz 3G for use on AT&T, Rogers, Bell, and Telus, and 2GB of internal storage coupled with a bundled and pre-installed 16GB microSDHC card. Where the Streak sets itself far, far besides the gang, though, is with a fully enormous 5-inch capacitive touchscreen at 800 x 480 resolution. Of course, it\’s a polarizing feature — and for plenty, it\’ll singlehandedly determine whether the phone is a buy or a no-buy.
Our original review ultimately concluded that the Streak was a promising device wanting an update from Android 1.6 to Froyo. On re-evaluation, does our American reviewer agree? Read on.
Hardware
The Droid X is a very imposing device — so for us with the intention to say that the Streak dwarfs the Droid X is making one hell of an announcement. It\’s clear that Dell expects you to generally hold it in a landscape orientation (more on this inside the software section), and in that respect, it works fine for users of any hand size; when you imagine the way in which you\’d normally hold a PSP (a real one, not a Go), you\’re on target. Be that as it is able to, there are definitely times while you\’ll need to hold it portrait, and for that Herculean operation, you\’ll need the hands of a yeti. Actually, that\’s a little bit an overstatement — we\’d consider our hands a bit of bigger than average, and we were ready to get a comfy grip on it, though looking to reach every corner of the display together with your thumb is a troublesome affair at best.
At 10mm, the Streak is one of the thinnest smartphones around, but the effect of that thinness is amplified by the device\’s surface area. In other words, it feels even thinner than it actually is. As we\’d noted in our review, so long as you\’re not wearing tight pants (or pants with unusually small pockets), it\’s totally pocketable without too much drama or bulge; a fair rule of thumb is that if the 4.3-inch Droid X or EVO 4G fit for you, the Streak should fit, too, particularly because of the curved edges and glossy, slippery surfaces. It\’s a decent thing that it\’s so easily concealed, because it\’s a major conversation piece when it\’s out — a testament to the indisputable fact that there\’s seriously nothing else quite love it out there today. Seriously, strangers of every kind will come up to you and wish to grasp what the heck it’s you\’re tapping on, so be prepared for that.
Talking slightly more concerning the Streak\’s materials and construction, we will be able to\’t overstate it: it\’s a simply gorgeous phone, truly one of the most prettiest we\’ve ever seen. Dell has done a powerful job of blending the Gorilla Glass display almost completely flush with its surroundings in this type of way that apparently to be a solid, uninterrupted sheet of curved, glossy blackness — an effect just like that achieved by the Palm Pre, but with much more reassuring levels of construction and quality here. If truth be told, the Streak really feels more like a computer than a phone in some respects, a testament to Dell\’s traditional comfort zone. That said, we did have a couple concerns; first, the plastic caps that sit on both sides of the display had a bent to creak when pressed, particularly the tip one where the earpiece and front-facing camera are located. That\’s not a large deal since you don\’t really have a sound reason to be pressing too hard on these parts of the phone, but an even bigger concern lies with the display itself: pressing on it with anything more than a lightweight touch causes some LCD rippling around the sides, a sign that it\’s taking more stress than it may.
Controls and ports on the Streak are fairly standard for an Android device with a couple notable exceptions. The capacitive buttons below the display (or to the correct side of it, counting on the orientation) are capacious and work rather well. Strangely, though, there\’s no dedicated search key a few of the trio, an odd omission for any Android phone, let alone one with this much room across; we thought \” no big deal\” initially, but we did actually find ourselves regularly missing it. More importantly, though, the Streak eschews the nearly universal micro-USB port for a wacky custom one — it form of resembles an iPod connector, but without the ubiquity or the provision of hundreds of compatible crappy alarm clock docks. Apple, for sure, can escape with pretending micro-USB doesn\’t exist because it\’s cultivated its own widely-popular standard during the last decade, and by now, the general public have an iPod cable or three lying around. Dell, however, can\’t break out with it. The undeniable fact that we couldn\’t use our already-connected cables to charge the Streak or transfer files to and from our PC drove us nuts, never mind the indisputable fact that you\’re stuck buying accessories and spare cables — likely at jacked-up prices — straight from the source or from whatever relatively small third-party ecosystem develops to support this phone. For sure, the advantage to the proprietary connector is that can be purchased an amazing dock for the Streak that features HDMI-out and a USB port, and that\’s totally fine, Dell — just give us a micro-USB port on the phone, too.
The Streak\’s display is amazing. It\’s not quite as vibrant or bright as an AMOLED device or an iPhone 4, nevertheless it\’s exceptionally usable outdoors and has a few of the best touch sensitivity we\’ve ever experienced — there were actually a couple cases where we had to prove to ourselves that we were even making contact with the display with our fingertips when taps were being registered (turns out they were, but just barely). Dell makes great use of the screen\’s real estate, too; even if its 800 x 480 resolution isn’t any higher than, say, a Nexus One, the Streak uses lower-resolution screen elements (icons etc) that will fit rather more on the screen at one time — and because it\’s five inches across, you could really profit from it. Sure, you can also make out individual pixels in the various fonts and icons, but so what? We\’ll take with the ability to see twelve Gmail items on the screen directly with message body previews (pictured above on the proper, versus a Droid X on the left) any day over higher pixel density.
Mirroring our British colleague\’s sentiments, we were a bit underwhelmed by camera performance and disappointed that video capture tops out with VGA. Shots were generally oversaturated, seemed heavily compressed, and just generally gave the look of they came off an inexpensive sensor with poor optics; the typical-def videos didn\’t fare significantly better, hampered by mediocre sound quality. That each one is probably not a subject for plenty of users — especially since a phone as big as the Streak doesn\’t really make for the best camera — but due to the fact that many modern smartphones like the Droid Incredible, EVO 4G, iPhone 4, and N8 are all delivering high-def video capture and superb stills, it\’s still a bummer. We also had some strange issues with the automatic white balance delivering stratospherically high color temperature indoors (take a look at our sample shot of the iPhone 4 within the gallery), and were confused to work out that the phone offers no automatic flash control — you\’ve got to trigger the dual LEDs yourself when you think you’d like them.
Software
Herein lies the genuine tragedy of the Streak. Glancing at the downright mean-looking hardware, you assume that this can be a very powerful, full-featured computer that would replace a laptop or netbook in many cases. In some respects, that\’s true — Android is arguably essentially the mostsome of the most powerful, flexible mobile operating system in the marketplace today — but we came away feeling like the item was gimped in some significant ways that arbitrarily limit its appeal.
First, and most manifestly, the Streak is launching with Android 1.6. Froyo and Flash 10.1 are promised in an update, but the actual fact remains that Dell is releasing a high-end smartphone in the midst of 2010 running a platform it truly is now three major revisions old. And that\’s not just a meaningless number, either — there are some very practical implications to the version gap. As an instance, Google Maps doesn\’t support pinch-to-zoom here, even when you update the built-in app to the newest that\’s available, version 4.3 — that especially sucks considering how great it looks on a display this massive! You\’re also denied access to the \” official\” Facebook and Twitter experiences for Android, instead being stuck with half-assed clients that Dell has baked into the firmware.
Then, there\’s the surface. We see what Dell tried to do here — we predict — nevertheless it didn\’t exercise session. It kind of feels they sought to make Android a little bit more MID-friendly by adding capabilities geared specifically toward making the most of the 5-inch display; the pop-up app menu and notification window, as an example. In doing so, though, they\’ve left a trail of questionable design decisions that left us craving for stock Android (or Sense… or really, anything) at virtually every turn. Here\’s an example: you are able to\’t swipe down from the end of the screen to get the notification drawer, that is arguably one of Android\’s most brilliant gestures. Instead, you\’ve got to tap an incredibly small gray area within the status bar, which in turn pops up a bubble listing your current notifications. Dell has also managed, against all odds, to not have room to point out the time within the status bar whenever you\’re in portrait orientation — a powerful feat, considering we\’re talking a couple of 5-inch WVGA display.
Speaking of portrait orientation, Dell really doesn\’t plan a good way to be using it very often — which, reckoning on your style and your hand size, may or is probably not a safe assumption. The home screen doesn\’t work at all in portrait, though some elements of it — context menus, for example — can occasionally be coaxed to do it. Virtually all apps, obviously, are more than pleased to work in portrait — so while you\’re using the phone that way, you may find yourself getting used to using the home screen sideways to launch apps you\’re looking to get into. We were also surprised to determine that Dell killed the concept that of the trash can on the home screen, so if you like to delete an icon or a widget, you\’ve got to hold it until you \” pick it up\” then drop it again; it\’ll stay highlighted red, indicating you could press the Menu button to get a delete command. Awkward and unnecessary.
We were also unimpressed with the keyboard, which Dell has made as full-featured as possible (to milk the display size, we expect) at the detriment of usability. In portrait mode, they\’ve tacked on punctuation keys and a dedicated Caps Lock key inside the letter rows, which we were accidentally hitting almost constantly (though the dedicated numeric row at the head is a neat addition). In landscape, they\’ve inexplicably put a whole numeric keypad to the appropriate of the letters, which suggests you’ll sock away any dreams of typing with two thumbs unless it’s essential learn to effectively do it off-center. Considering our extremely positive experience with the Droid X\’s keyboard, we\’d come into the Streak assuming that we’d do even better — bigger is sort of universally better by way of screen size and soft keyboards — but it surely\’s just not the case with the Streak. Of course, we\’d love to attempt the stock Android keyboard on this display in portrait mode and spot what variety of typing speed shall we achieve.
There are bright spots within the Streak\’s software, though. We really liked its home screen panel system, that’s user-configurable in real time — just by tapping within the status bar, you may add or remove panels so that you just don\’t should swipe through five once you don\’t want five. The browser has also been customized from the stock Android 1.6 app to add in pinch zooming, that’s a huge usability issue for some users (though interestingly, the Streak\’s screen is simply sufficiently big for you to totally read some full websites completely zoomed out). It seemed a slightly slower than it can\’ve been considering the 1GHz processor, but not to the point of annoyance.
Wrap-up
For lots, high-end browsing and messaging capabilities have overtaken the importance of voice calling in a phone, and that\’s a philosophy that enormous handsets like the Streak embrace with open arms. It\’s an exhilarating, young segment of the smartphone market where we expect we\’re going to peer a variety of growth and innovation over the following couple of years — and in some ways, Dell\’s 5-inch monster is at the vanguard of that charge. What makes the Streak this type of heartbreaking device for us, though, is that the kinds of people it\’s usually to attract — power users and road warriors who value sheer capability over portability — are the very same those who are least more likely to appreciate Dell\’s heavy-handed and usually unhelpful UI tweaks.
We\’re more than willing to forgive a weak camera to carry this beauty, but ultimately, it\’s the firmware that\’s holding the Streak back from its full potential — and we\’re not confident Dell is going to tone down the outside when the time comes to launch the Froyo upgrade (which, by the way in which, can\’t come soon enough). For now, we\’ll look to the hacker community to get us some nice, clean Android 2.2 builds for this thing — but if Dell wants to play within the hyper-competitive smartphone market over the long run, they\’re going to wish to bear in mind something that they\’ve known inside the PC space for lots of years: they\’re a hardware manufacturer, not a software firm.
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