A leaked Rogers document has revealed that dummies for Dell’s 5″ Android smartphone are landing at Rogers near the end of the month, with devices proper becoming available in early November – a bit behind AT&T, but better late than never. You can take the write-up of the Streak in Rogers’ official magazine as something of a wink-and-a-nod to an official release. There are some other considerably less interesting things happening at Rogers beyond the Dell Streak, including the release of the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro around the same time frame, and a feature phone called the Doro PhoneEasy 410gsm directed towards seniors paired up with an appropriate “Essential Connect” program.For those who have yet to meet the Dell Streak, it has a 1GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, Wi-Fi, GPS, 3G (7.2 Mbps HSPA), microSD memory card slot with 16 GB of storage already on board, 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and front-facing VGA camera for video conferencing, and of course a 5-inch 800 x 480 capacitive touchscreen. Not bad hardware overall, it’s just the Android 1.6 that has a lot of people grinding their teeth.
With the Streak finally coming to my permafrosted motherland, it’s especially saddening that Dell has put the brakes on the much-needed Android 2.1 update, but 2.2 might be available in time for a launch on Rogers as we’ve been hearing an upgrade would be out by the end of the year. Maybe that’s what Rogers was waiting for on launching the Streak… If you’re still stuck on 1.6, you can probably root around and find the 2.1 update that slipped out on Orange a few weeks ago.
Although this particular model straddles the phone/tablet boundary, Dell has committed to releasing products that compete with the larger iPad, PlayBook, and Galaxy Tab. Even though the tablet space is getting awfully crowded these days, the Streak stands on its own and could easily stay out of directly competing with tablets, if only by virtue of its unique size.
[via Phandroid]