Exclusive: Dell Thunder prototype preview (video)

Christmas came early at Engadget HQ this year, as evidenced by the picture above — you’re staring at two Dell Thunder prototype smartphones, each with some surprising quirks, and hints that they would include global HSPA, AWS for T-Mobile, and perhaps even a touch of CDMA support. We’ll alert you previous to time that these are labeled EVT1 for ” engineering verification test” and date back to the April leak, so that they ‘re about as early as you may get — don’t expect the overall handset to arrive without some significant differences. Good? Then peek the gallery below, hit the break, and let’s get on with the show.

Hardware: When Santa Claus delivered our two units, he forgot to bring the rear cover for either one, but even without it the Thunder’s a graceful, sexy beast. Completely curved chrome sides make it feel like an original iPhone inside the hand, but with completely recessed hardware buttons that give the handset a slightly of class and a pretty curved glass screen. The end houses an entire-size 3.5mm headset jack, while the bottom has a pair of tinny but loud speakers and a micro-USB port for charging, and both surfaces are coated in soft-touch plastic, which made for a nice single-handed landscape grip by pinching those sides between our forefinger and thumb. Within the device’s back panel is definitely one of the most obvious layouts we’ve seen, with both microSD card and SIM slot completely accessible without removing the easily-swappable 3.7V, 1,400mAh battery. Also, notches at both sides show the rear cover is slid, in preference to pried off. Last but not least, there’s rear-facing 8 megapixel camera with autofocus and a 4x digital zoom, plus a bright single-LED flash right under the camera module. While the ability and camera buttons were stiff and hard to to press and there were plenty of visible, light-leaking seams, those styles of things typically get tightened (or loosened, as required) in the direction of production anyhow.

Screen: There are two stuff you should find out about the Thunder’s curved glass screen: the glass is awesome, and the actual LCD panel underneath just isn’t. Using the glass is like searching through a window into the arena of Android, with off-angle views distorted in a fashion that’s as useless as is it cool, but subsequently the window has a gorgeous dismal picture on the alternative side. If these If these prototypes have the OLED panel we were promised, we’ll eat an Engadget T-shirt, as they look like dim, standard LCDs, and though one unit is running at 800 x 480, the opposite is pushing something more like 1,280 x 768… but the screen doesn’t actually sport enough pixels to make that resolution comfortable to read. Honestly, both screens reek of prototype and we predict both to swapped out for rich, saturated OLED screens — especially considering Dell’s debug app incorporates a suite of AMOLED-specific tests. Here’s hoping it’s high-res, too, because if the Thunder had a pixel density reminiscent of Apple’s Retina Display, then this handset could be unrivaled.

Software: Bone-stock Android 2.1 (Eclair) was loaded on one unit, and a developer version of Android 1.6 (Donut) on the alternative, with out Froyo tweaks or custom Stage UI to be found, though the latter rig did have have an enchanting piece of software loaded: a test suite for Qualcomm CDMA programming. Most compatible apps worked right off the bat, but we couldn’t get the camera or camcorder to launch without a force close, so we weren’t in a position to tell which resolution the camera uses to record video.

Performance: Debug code and a number of apps all but confirm what’s under the hood — we’re watching a 1GHz Snapdragon QSM8250 CPU with Qualcomm Adreno graphics, just like Google’s Nexus One. Without the overhead of custom UI, transitions and programs were pretty snappy throughout, though there was a specific amount of lag when swiping the apps drawer. Raw CPU performance was actually slightly weaker in benchmarks than a pre-Froyo Nexus One, pulling 6.2MFLOPS in Linpack and taking 3600ms to finish a BenchmarkPi run, though graphically the Thunder pulled ahead with a decent 37.1fps in Neocore and 18.6fps in Nenamark. GPS was missing or completely disabled on both devices, so we couldn’t test how long it took to get a fix, but we reliably pulled down 5Mbps (on an up-to-18Mbps internet connection) over 802.11n WiFi. Though we didn’t test its accuracy, there also appears to be an entire set of inertial sensors on board, with a working three-axis magnetometer and a three-axis accelerometer so one can hopefully fuel motion-controlled games in months to come back.

Educated guesses: There are many features referenced inside the Thunder’s bootloader and debug software that didn’t actually make into these prototype machines, namely FM radio support, dual microphones, HDMI output and a hardware dock connector. Furthermore, Dell’s debug apps have tests for quad-band GSM plus AT&T / Rogers / Telus / Bell and Europe-compatible 3G data. Meanwhile, the second phone identifies as AWS, suggesting a likely T-Mobile launch, and in fact we’re very taken with that CDMA test suite — Verizon or Sprint, anyone? A ” Hynix 4G + 4G” label suggests the phone might have 512MB RAM and 512MB ROM, like the Droid 2, and though we didn’t see a niche for it on the device, there are references to a VGA, possibly front-facing camera to accompany the 8 megapixel imager on the back.

These handsets date from April and are obviously pretty faraway from the finish line, but we adore what we’ve seen. Take a look at the video below, then let us know in comments if there’s the rest you’d like us to discover that doesn’t involve disassembly, blenders, or stabbing pens into the expensive prototype screen.

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