The cheapest Android tablet you can grab in the United States right now – with a two-year contract – is the Dell Streak 7. Coming in at $199, its pricing is attractive, but it seems to have little fanfare. That may soon change, as this 7-inch tablet just got some Clockwork Recovery love. Now, bring on the ROMs!
Even though the Android 3.0 Honeycomb source code has yet to be released, the Dell Streak 7 may be one of the first decent 7-inch tablets to get a working port on it. The ViewSonic G-Tablet already has quite the developer following, so it may be one of the best valued tablet just waiting for a Honeycomb port, but the 7-inch Streak will appeal to people looking for a bit more portability. Unlike the more expensive Galaxy Tab, the Streak 7 out-specs it with a NVIDIA Tegra 2 and 5-megapixel camera, but it suffers from an unfavorable screen resolution of 800 x 480, where the Tab’s display resolution is 1024 x 600.
While we wait on some Honeycomb love for the Streak, users should be happy to know that they have the option to flash new ROMs on the tablet now. That said, there aren’t any right now, so there will be some waiting involved, but a custom recovery is the first step. Soon we may be seeing some Android 2.3 Gingerbread ROMs on the tablet, which would still be a step up from the Stage UI Froyo software running on the Dell Streak 7 to begin with.
Now that it has received some proper hacking, the tablet may begin to appeal to people looking at apply mods. Dell’s Stage UI isn’t a bad Android skin, but it’s not a great one, either. The Streak 7 has the specs to be a great tablet, and it may just need some better software to actually be a great tablet. Now, with the Clockwork Recovery on board, it finally has a chance.
Thanks to the great developers out there, yet again, they’re giving Android devices the ability to flex muscles it never would from the manufacturers.
[Via: XDA-Developers, AndroidCentral]