Dell Streak: first-look Review

If you've been following the ongoing saga of Dell's Streak, you've probably already read our review of O2 UK's version -- thing is, the British perspective can be very different from the Yankee one (we didn't see eye-to-eye during the War of 1812, for instance). To that end, we wanted to circle back now that the gargantuan Android beast is finally coming close to a US release and get another quick take.

As a refresher, this thing matches or exceeds the specs you'd expect to find 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 apart from the crowd, though, is with an absolutely enormous 5-inch capacitive touchscreen at 800 x 480 resolution. Needless to say, it's a polarizing feature -- and for many, 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 in need of an update from Android 1.6 to Froyo. On second look, does our American reviewer agree? Read on.

The Streak's display is fantastic. It's not quite as vibrant or bright as an AMOLED device or an iPhone 4, but it's exceptionally usable outdoors and has some 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 though its 800 x 480 resolution is no higher than, say, a Nexus One, the Streak uses lower-resolution screen elements (icons and the like) so that you can fit far more on the screen at one time -- and because it's five inches across, you can really take advantage of it. Sure, you can make out individual pixels in some of the fonts and icons, but so what? We'll take being able to see twelve Gmail items on the screen at once with message body previews (pictured above on the right, versus a Droid X on the left) any day over higher pixel density.