Dell Mini 5 / Streak prototype impressions

Dell's puzzled the world for quite some time with its outlandish Mini 5 / Streak -- at first glance it's just another Android-based MID, but a quick fiddle with it reveals the full-fledged 3G phone inside. So will it fit in a pocket? Can we carry it around like a normal phone? Is this the future form factor that will bring the ultimate balance between portability and practicality? With such heavy dose of curiosity, we eventually traveled all the way to Shenzhen literally just to grab this prototype. Now, before you read on, do bear in mind that some of its features -- especially the OS -- may not make it to the final design when it comes out later this year, nor do we know what stage this prototype was at. We good? OK.

Let's start with the basics: the main specs on our unit include Android 1.6 (which will definitely be obsolete for the final product), five-inch 800 x 480 capacitive touchscreen, Snapdragon QSD8250 chipset (with CPU clocked at 1GHz), Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and WCDMA radio. Sadly, we have no info on whether the Mini 5 will have other cellular radio options, but it wouldn't hurt to send Dell a petition regarding this matter. For those who want the dimensions and weight in numbers, it's about 152mm x 78mm x 10mm at 8 ounces (including the battery, which lasts for almost a day for normal usage on 3G). Memory-wise there's 405MB RAM and 1.63GB of internal storage -- a slight let-down for the latter, so let's hope the retail unit will be given a more generous dose of silicon. You can add a microSD card next to the battery on the back, but it appears that the mysterious second card slot we saw in the earlier teardown only gave us false hope -- we couldn't find a way to get to it without prying open the housing. Connection to your computer relies on a proprietary port -- similar but slightly larger than the iPod's -- to USB cable, which may suggest that we will see some more peripherals made for the Mini 5 and its future siblings.

Dell Mini 5 / Streak prototype impressions

Software, buttons and keyboard

We won't bore you with a full list of preinstalled Android apps on our Mini 5, but there are indeed a few that are worth mentioning: the usual bundle including Google Mail, YouTube, Amazon MP3, WebKit browser (with pinch-to-zoom but no Flash support), Google Maps (no pinch-to-zoom, boo!), K-9 Mail (which supports Exchange server) and Quickoffice (a file browser that can also view Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents). For multimedia there's the standard Android music app, a Gallery app by ArcSoft (pinch-to-zoom supported), and a three-year trial of the forthcoming CyberLink Live for Android that gives you "instant access to your photos, music, and video stored on your home computers." There's no social networking integration (like MOTOBLUR and Sense) as such, but you can use the preloaded Meebo IM for chatting on AIM, Facebook, Google Talk, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo, etc. If you want to be discrete about your gigantic phone, you may find the Voice Control app by Nuance handy for voice-dialing -- it can be triggered by holding down the button on the bundled handsfree earphones.

Many of the apps support both portrait and landscape modes, although landscape mode only works one way (with the dock connector pointing downwards). This is actually pretty neat for those who like to read in portrait mode while lying in bed, but you'll have to get used to leaning on your right side of your body for this. The dialer app -- as pictured above -- is only available in portrait mode and does look like work in progress, plus we haven't found a way to initiate or receive video calls, leaving the front-facing 640 x 480 camera pretty useless except for some casual self-portraits. Hopefully the final software build will have these fixed. As for normal phone calls we've found voice quality on both ends to be satisfactory.

Going back to the homescreen, we see that Dell's done some skinning -- the top bar houses a button for triggering the apps menu (unlike the traditional pull-up menu on most other Android devices), along with a homescreen switcher button and notifications button. The shortcut icons are contained in shaded grey squares. Only a couple of widgets got our attention: Power Control allows us to quickly change the screen brightness and turn on / off various wireless connections, while the cute TasKiller widgets let us kill apps one by one or all in one go. The widgets for Twitter, Facebook and RSS are useful, but like those on other Android phones, they still lack options for refresh rates. Any chance that we can have enhanced versions, Dell?

The only physical buttons on the Mini 5 all reside on the top edge (when held as pictured above). Starting from the left we have a 3.5mm headphone jack, followed by buttons for volume, power and camera (which has two stages: focus and then capture). On the right of screen there are three touch-sensitive buttons with haptic feedback: back, menu and home. Like other Android phones, the on-screen keyboard can be triggered by holding down the menu button, and as you can see above, the landscape version has a numpad that you may or may not like -- frankly, the keyboard offset is pretty annoying since we need to stretch our right thumb across the numpad for handheld typing, plus the keys could've been bigger if the numpad wasn't there. We think those two factors are to be blamed for our constant typos, so a numpad-less option would totally make our day. That said, when the phone's placed on the desk, we typed better on the landscape keyboard using our index fingers. Similarly, the portrait keyboard performed better with our thumbs while we held the device.

Multimedia experience

Given the MID form factor and that gorgeous five-inch screen, we immediately loaded a few MP4 videos of various resolutions (1080p, 720p and 480p) to see what the Mini 5 could take. Annoyingly, our Mini 5's default video player could only handle MP4V video codec, so we had to convert our test videos, including the MP4 files that were compiled by iMovie (which encodes in H.264). On the contrary, Carrypad's heard from Dell at MWC that the final product will support "H.264 and other codecs." Even then, the device failed to open our 1080p files, but that's not the end of the world considering 720p is already plentiful for the 800 x 480 screen -- we had a 7Mbps 720p video playing smoothly with just the odd stutter. On a similar matter, the preloaded YouTube app performed nicely for us, except for the lack of higher quality playback options to make full use of the large screen.

Moving on to audio: the Mini 5 has a mono speaker on the back that sounds loud and surprisingly clear, but naturally, the bundled earphones sound even better -- we'd scale it to somewhere between the levels of the iPod buds and Apple's in-ear headphones. Fans of stereo Bluetooth headphones will be pleased to know that our Mini 5 supports A2DP and AVRCP, which are particularly useful for devices of such size.

The main camera offers five-megapixel pictures of reasonable quality, along with decent 640 x 480 video capture but with slight rolling shutter effect (aka "jelly motion"). The accompanying camera app has a wealth of settings for both modes: scene, white balance, brightness, contrast, and resolution. Extra settings for photo mode include flash, self-timer, multi-shot, shutter sound, GPS location and flicker adjustment, whereas video mode has options for video format (MPEG-4 and H.263). Both support digital zoom of up to 4x. Once a picture is taken, you get a three-second preview along with options to edit, send, set as wallpaper / contact icon and delete. You get the same options by accessing the photos on the left-hand bar. In edit mode you can rotate, crop, adjust colors, draw, resize and add various goodies (effects, frames, text and clipart). Thankfully, there are undo and redo buttons, too.

Here are a couple of videos and some photos captured by the five-megapixel camera:

Dell Mini 5 prototype camera photo samples

Comfort

Understandably, most people are concerned about whether this 5-inch tablet would fit inside their pocket. We're happy to tell you that it snuggled nicely in our jeans' pockets, which is most likely to do with the device's sensible thickness and our lack of tight pants. Apart from the slight exposure (as pictured below) and the occasional struggle when walking up stairs, we've had no other issues with pocketing our Mini 5. A more popular concern would be whether you'd look like a dork when holding the monstrous phone right next to your face. To be honest, it's not too bad, except the user would most likely be more concious about the size, simply because you'd have to stretch your fingers a bit to accommodate the unusually large footprint and weight -- you can see the size better demoed in the earlier walkthrough video. Just keep that to yourself and you'll be fine -- so far most blokes who've seen and touched our Mini 5 have said they want one, so this phone is already quite the masculine symbol. And yes, the phone makes a great tool for chatting up the ladies, too (although they've all said it's too big and heavy after playing with it; perhaps the Mini 3 will strike their fancy?).

Wrap-up

Dell may not be the first to forage into the scene of oversized smartphones (see HTC Advantage and HTC Universal), but it looks like the combination of Android, Snapdragon, 3G affordability and resurrection of the tablet trend may give the Mini 5 a great potential. We found the five-inch form factor to be neither too big nor too small, perfect for browsing the web, watching videos (watch out, Archos 5!), car navigation and reading ebooks on the go. Even the battery life matches most current 3G phones, despite the larger screen and faster CPU. We haven't seen one yet, but a dock for this phone would be a great addition as it's just big enough to serve as a digital picture frame, if not a side monitor for your social networking apps or emails. Update: the dock exists!

So, would we get one? Absolutely. Would we buy one? Depends -- Dell's been pretty tight-lipped about pricing, and some of you have even expressed concerns about the possibility of this WCDMA phone heading to AT&T. As mentioned before, the firmware on the actual phone will definitely be different when it comes out at some point this year, so hopefully between now and then Dell can work in some social networking integration, a podcast subscriber, a prettier dialer app, a better keyboard and Google Maps with pinch to zoom. As for hardware, all we ask for is a better camera and larger internal storage. Cheers for now, Michael!

[d3sc3nd3ncy Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:16PM]

At first glance, the resolution should not be the same as the Nexus One. Other than that, I am fairly impressed by the device.

I'd prefer 720p. (1280x800 or 1366x768)

[Steve Miller Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:06PM]

Awesome I'm loving this thing...

I have a question, as I know absolutely nothing about android (use OSX) is android able to stream music via bluetooth?...if so this will definitely get me off of the OSX bandwagon and buy a mini 5 the day it comes out.

[BigJayDogg3 Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:14PM]

@Steve Miller

I don't think Android can do it itself, but this can. It's in the article.

[Steve Miller Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:22PM]

@BigJayDogg3

hah...wow how did i miss that?!

[logicbombde Posted Feb 19th 2010 5:28PM]

@Steve Miller

A2DP (advanced audio distribution protocol) = stereo bluetooth audio streaming.

AVRCP (audio/video Remote control protocol) = pause/play skip tracks from your BT headset

[yulebellow Posted Feb 20th 2010 2:16AM]

@Steve Miller

OSX and Android aren't mutually exclusive

[BigJayDogg3 Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:13PM]

Is it a two-stage shutter button? Like on most actual cameras, you hold it to the first detent to focus, then all the way to snap the picture?

[Richard Lai Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:13PM]

@BigJayDogg3 Good question. Yes, it is a two-stage button.

[Oshitheguru Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:20PM]

I find this better than the ipad.

Dell mini 5>iPad.

let's go Dell, and it has a camera, and it's a phone!!! I bet it's cheaper than the ipad too.

[dwboston1 Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:21PM]

Nice write-up. After the disappointment of WPS7, this may be the device to get this year.

[Anatidae Posted Feb 19th 2010 2:15PM]

@dwboston1 Funny, I don't find the WinPho7 OS disappointing at all. I am rather intrigued by the whole hub idea, and that is because I bounce from email, to facebook, to twitter, etc... on my iPhone when I am out and about and want to check to see what is going on in my digital community. Having that in one hub sounds useful.

Of course, I'd like to have a hub that gathers all my blogs too. It would be great if Engadget could expand the functionality of a blog hub with the features of their iPhone app.

But I suppose, all that will depend on the developer toolkit. My guess is how one ends up developing for the new Windows Phone OS will be a huge factor in how well it ends up doing in the marketplace.


Of course, it seems that this hardware could be dual booted into both Android and WinPho7

[torch29 Posted Feb 19th 2010 5:35PM]

@Anatidae
I'm very interested in what possibility there is of Dell making a mini5 with WP7. Even a mini4 WP7 would awesome.

[joihan777 Posted Feb 20th 2010 4:31AM]

@torch29

The same thought occured to me. WM6.5 isn't terrible but 7 does seem to address some of the prevoius sticking points. The Dellicious Mini5 looks like it has some serious potential as a walk-about compuphone.

First Dell product I've ever anticipated!

[celticelk Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:22PM]

Does it have access to the Android Marketplace?

[Richard Lai Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:23PM]

@celticelk Yep. :)

[theefman Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:23PM]

Looks like all other android devices. Put Windows Phone 7 Series on there and you have a killer device. Imagine the People or Music+Video hubs on that screen, tasty.

[Damaga Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:23PM]

"just another Android-based MID?" Really, how many Android MIDs are even out on the market, for your average consumer to purchase?

[Richard Lai Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:30PM]

@Damaga Enough out there: http://www.engadget.com/tag/android%2Cmid

[masta vaan Posted Feb 19th 2010 6:08PM]

@Richard Lai
not many known ones that are released, ewxcept for archos 5... really

[anonymousx Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:26PM]

Well keep us informed, (oh, blow your nose) seems a PC in your pocket & when it does get improved & a bluetooth works, it seems Dell has come up with something.

[daewootech Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:28PM]

this is one phone/device im excited about, however proprietary connectors? as if we need more proprietary connectors!!! didnt the whole handset alliance already decide to switch to usb micro(after all my shit is usb mini of course) so what happened there? also why the heck does everything come out for 3g? stupid sprint needs to get out of the stoneage and get with the program and use sims so we can interchange our phones

[AlexSanchez Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:35PM]

@daewootech

Its called WiMax son.

[masta vaan Posted Feb 19th 2010 6:09PM]

@daewootech
CDMA doesnt require or support SIM cards...

[daewootech Posted Feb 19th 2010 6:25PM]

@daewootech let me rephrase that, since you guys are as usual getting caught up on the wrong info trying to know it alls, i know sims are not compatible with sprints radio, im saying i wish there wasnt the divide of the radios, and i enjoyed when i was with att not because of thier service, but because of the freedom of having a worldphone that all i needed to do was add a sim card and the phone was indapendant of service or provider, more of having two differnet things, i have hardware, and the radio just connects to my current sim, i switched to sprint because i jumped on a cheaper family plan with my girl, but i wish there was a universal radio set of signals that everyone used so we wouldnt have to worry if we had cdma or gsm, just rather worry about 1. what hardware we want, i.e. apple, htc, etcc.. and 2. what service provider best suited my needs, and then just link them.

[GreenOrc Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:37PM]

It's not fit in my pocket. That's for sure. So even if it has a phone function. I'm not gonna carry it around with me (not buying it). Who wants to carry a man bag? You?

[killthrash Posted Feb 19th 2010 4:59PM]

@GreenOrc A man bag? No way. I'd rather strap it to my ass.

[dansus Posted Feb 19th 2010 6:58PM]

@GreenOrc

No but will fit nicely in my purse. ^^

[jules Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:40PM]

Here's a stupid question: If the resolution 800x480 won't I get the same real estate on a Nexus One when browsing?

[dwboston1 Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:43PM]

@jules

Resolution and screen size are not the same thing.

[Richard Lai Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:43PM]

@jules Sure, but there's the issue of reliability (higher pixel density could lead to higher failure rate, esp. with dead pixels) and practicality (font size). It's more about pixel density than resolution, at the end of the day.

[SDreamer Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:43PM]

Looking good. Hope to see more MIDs coming out. I hope this will be sold unlocked, I'm looking for a replacement for my iPod Touch, and not sure if I want to get the HP Slate or wait for something better.

[OME6A Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:45PM]

Make that camera a lot faster, throw in a CDMA radio, and I'll buy two at launch for on VZW.

I wish they'd announce more about their plans and timeline for this device. I'm anxiously awaiting the Nexus One on VZW, but would gladly wait to compare the devices if the Mini 5 will be an option.

[sodaboy581 Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:51PM]

@OME6A The WCDMA radio is already there... unless that's different than CDMA?

[Richard Lai Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:51PM]

@sodaboy581 Yes, they're different and not compatible.

[sodaboy581 Posted Feb 19th 2010 2:26PM]

@Richard Lai Oh, thanks for letting me know. I thought WCDMA was some sort of enhanced CDMA, but backwards compatible. I've never used a CDMA or WCDMA phone, always been using GSM based devices.

Well, I'm planning on getting one of these, so whichever one Dell pumps out here first, will determine the carrier I stay or leave to. Currently on AT&T, so if it only has WCDMA for 3G, I may have to jump to Sprint or Verizon!!

[itsnotabigtruck Posted Feb 19th 2010 4:22PM]

@OME6A You don't understand - WCDMA is used by UMTS and HSPA, which AT&T already uses.

[xinjiapo2703 Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:45PM]

if you could dual boot windows or something like that on it, than hands down could replace a laptop for me

[oldpass56 Posted Feb 20th 2010 12:38PM]

@xinjiapo2703
I THINK (key word, I'm not 100percent sure) that this is based on ARm, so the only windows ou could get on there would be Windows CE, which sucks...

[Auouywonz Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:53PM]

I'm on a 3 year contract and only just approaching my first year done, so I won't be getting anything new till at least another year... but I'm going to keep my eyes on the Dell Mini's.

One thing I know about Cell Phones and especially Android phones is, don't get hyped for a phone that's out now. Get hyped for a phone that's announced to come out after your contracts dead. Third generation Mini 5, here I come!

[dansus Posted Feb 19th 2010 7:16PM]

@Auouywonz

Another thing i know, dont sign 3 year contracts. (why would anyone do that?)

[chodaboy19 Posted Feb 19th 2010 1:52PM]

I would get rid of my 3GS for this!

[evildoer Posted Feb 19th 2010 2:02PM]

im gonna get one of these the second it comes out. i wonder if there will be 720x480 widescreen video recording when its final. most of these devices nowadays seem to have widescreen recording modes. my ancient n95 records in 640x480, its the only disapointing detail about this phone to me.

[BlackViper91 Posted Feb 19th 2010 2:17PM]

So, did I read the article wrong, or does it lack EDGE bands? I couldn't use this as a primary phone without EDGE, where I live is too rural. And I'm far too poor as a student to buy myself this and a nice Android phone. That's a disappointment.

[evildoer Posted Feb 19th 2010 2:17PM]

@BlackViper91
found on another site:
Cellular;Networks: GSM850, GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900, UMTS2100
Cellular+Data-Links: CSD, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA

[Richard Lai Posted Feb 19th 2010 2:17PM]

@BlackViper91 Yes, EDGE works on ours too.

[BlackViper91 Posted Feb 19th 2010 2:33PM]

@Richard Lai Thanks for the quick reply. I thought I'd seen elsewhere that it also had EDGE, but I wasn't sure. Glad it was just a misunderstanding on my part, really looking forward to this device.

Now Dell just needs to release it for a reasonable price =]

[nerdherd Posted Feb 19th 2010 2:09PM]

Did anyone else laugh when they read "a great tool for chatting up the ladies, too (although they've all said it's too big and heavy after playing with it" ? Maybe I just have a dirty mind...

[Shrikey Posted Feb 20th 2010 1:49PM]

@nerdherd Yes i was sure theres some sort of innuendo going on there.

[Nitesh Posted Feb 19th 2010 2:10PM]

" so far most blokes who've seen and touched our Mini 5 "



I can't be the only one who laughed my ass off at this. Only 5', eh Engadget?

[Anatidae Posted Feb 19th 2010 2:10PM]

Sounds like most of the problems are with the software. I doubt that Dell is going to put any big effort in skinning and customizing an older OS release. If they are going to add some additional bling, then I am guessing it is in works on some beta version of 2.x