The Dell Streak continues to drop in price with the 5-inch tablet now available for $399 unlocked from Dell. This new low price applies only to the 16 GB model in Carbon black. Before you snub your nose at this Android 1.6-powered tablet, remember the Streak may ship with Android but 1.6, but it will be upgraded to Android 2.2 when you fire up the device for the first time. The price is right but the timing is not so good for any holiday gift giving. The current ship time is January 10th so you will miss out on both Christmas and New Year’s.
While many enjoy the 5-inch display and smaller size of the Streak, the Dell tablet is slowly losing ground to its bigger cousin, the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Under the hood, the Streak offers a 1GHz processor, 5-inch 800 x 480 display, 802.11 b/g, 16/32 GB storage, microSD expansion, 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, front-facing camera, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and 1350mAh battery. The Galaxy Tab one-ups the Streak by offering a 7-inch 1024×600 display, 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and a 4,000mAh battery. The only downgrade on the Galaxy Tab is the rear-facing camera which comes in at 3-megapixels instead of 5-megapixels as included on the Streak.
Of course, both of these tablets may be eclipsed by the upcoming Motorola tablet. The 10-inch tablet was unofficially revealed by Andy Rubin at the D: Dive into Mobile conference. The tablet is expected to have a dual-core Tegra 2 processor and will run Android 3.0 Honeycomb, one of the first versions of Android optimized for a tablet device. Motorola hinted at a CES unveiling and the current rumor suggests the tablet may land as early as Q1 2010. Dell is wise to slash the price on the Streak and move as much inventory as possible before these next generation tablets start to hit the market.