The guys over at Engadget got their hands on two early Dell Thunder prototypes running Android, and damn if they’re not looking good. Earlier today on CNBC, the on-air folks tore the Streak apart, calling it boring, and that Dell itself was a boring company. Well, CNBC, you haven’t met the Thunder, have you?
To the uninformed, the Dell Thunder may not look all that great, but its specs surely pack a punch, even if we don’t know all the detailed specifications just yet. The device should sport a 4.1 inch OLED display, 1GHz CPU, an 8 megapixel camera, as well as a Hulu app to boot. While the specs aren’t confirmed, any changes that happen to the Thunder will likely be for the better. The sides of the device are adored with curved chrome, which may be a bit iPhone-like, but the overall shape of the device would make you say otherwise. It’s definitely not as iPhone-like as some other smartphones out there. One of the most interesting things about the Thunder is that the glass covering the display is slightly curved, yet the 4.1 inch display panel is flat. We have no idea why Dell chose to do this (possibly to make the picture on the display look like it’s jumping off the screen?), but we’ll take it!
Speaking of the display, the prototypes shown above are likely using regular LCD displays, and not OLED displays that the Thunder is said to ship with. The prototypes are also running stock Android 1.6, but we suspect the device will ship with Android 2.2 Froyo pre-installed, seeing as how it is suspected to come with Flash 10.1 support. While, we’re not positive, it’s very probably that Dell may throw their custom user interface onto the Thunder, as they did with the Streak. The UI on the Streak, dubbed the Stage UI, is not over-done, so it won’t be a completely different experience if you’re coming from stock Android, but we certainly wouldn’t hold it against Dell if they chose to stick with stock Android.
The Dell Thunder is shaping up to be a killer Android device, and with the prototypes out in the wild, hopefully we’ll hear some pricing and availability sometime in the near future. With the Thunder looking so good, we’re really excited to see what the Dell Flash and Smoke may bring us. Sorry Aero, no one wants you.
[Via: Engadget]