I came very close to purchasing a Dell Streak earlier this year. Despite some of the negative press that Dell's device received, mostly for being too small, I actually thought that the device had a lot going for it. It was pretty fast, very portable - I've never been one of those people who wants to lug around a 9-inch iPad just for the screen size; sit at a laptop for God's sake - and that hardened Gorilla Glass was a great feature.
What stopped me from buying it was their decision to go with Android 1.6 at launch. Having just upgraded my HTC G1, I wasn't prepared to go back to an older version of Android. My phone would have been better than my tablet. I also had a hunch that the promised upgrade to Froyo wouldn't happen quite as quickly as Dell were promising, which turned out to be a good call as they barely made it past 2.1. All of which was pretty sad, as it seemed a great device and my head has now well and truly been turned by the Samsung Galaxy Tab.
So, to the news that Dell are now releasing their 7-Inch Looking Glass tablet, within weeks! Sounds great. If they get the price right, this could be a real challenger to the G Tab. Unfortunately for Dell however, there's that issue with using the latest version of Android lurking around in the shadows again. When I checked the specifications Android Central have it running Android 2.1. Are Dell incapable of staying up to date or something? In reality, this suggests that Dell have rushed the tablet out to hit the pre-Christmas tablet hype - which isn't actually a bad idea if you live in the UK and will have your economy smacked down by 20% sales tax in the New Year - cutting corners and abandoning Froyo for the sake of hitting a deadline.
Given their inability to update the Android OS on the Streak - their 2.1 update actually removed more features than it upgraded for some people - I won't be getting a Looking Glass. Sorry Dell.
No comments:
Post a Comment