Dell Streak Tablet Review Competition For the iPad?

You may have heard a lot of talk recently about Dell's first foray into the hand held computer market named the Streak. It's not quite an iPad and not quite a phone. It's somewhere in the middle. The big plus with this device is that it comes with Google's Android operating system. If you believe the statistics, Android based phones are slowly catching up to the iPhone so you can believe that this is a worry for Apple. So what does the Dell Streak offer? The answer to that is a lot as this device sure packs a punch. The real question is will it eat into Apple's iPad market share as the handheld browsing application of the year? Time will tell, but read on for the review and then make your own mind up!

Dell classes it as a MID (Mobile Internet Device) and I'm sure it'll be the first of many to flood the market over the next year. The screen on the Streak is 5 inches in size and is of course a multi touch interface. It does work as a mobile phone but it's much bigger than the iPhone so I wouldn't say it's a direct competitor. Although I've got a feeling you'll get some funny looks if you put this device up to your ear. I think a headset might be required! It comes with a Bluetooth earpiece so there's no need to spend any extra money on this. It does have Wi-Fi and a very cool feature using Google maps as it offers turn by turn navigation.

The camera features are also very cool. It has a front facing 5 megapixel autofocus camera with, as you'd expect, a flash. The battery is removable and the device offers the wonderful and down right necessary feature of multi-tasking. If you want to increase the size of your device, you can using the MicroSD card slot. This will expand your device by up to 32GB which is a great feature if you want to store extra movies or music.

You might have also heard the debate about using Flash technology on the iPad. The Dell Streak does support it unlike the iPad. I know it looks like things are moving to HTML5 but there's still so much content online using Flash that I think this is a great option to have on the device. I've been frustrated countless time (mostly on the BBC website) where I want to watch videos but I can't using the regular browser on my iPad.

Back to the lovely screen. I don't think it's a competitor to the mind blowing screen on the iPhone 4 but the screen does look great offering 16:9 WVGA widescreen and has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels.

Overall I'd say I'm a little puzzled by this device as I'm not sure where it fits in to the grand scheme of things. I know people said this about the iPad when it was launched. I feel the Dell Streak is somewhere in the middle again. Not quite a full screen browsing experience but it's too big to be a phone and carry around in your pocket. The 5 inch screen is great but wouldn't you rather have a 10 inch screen on the iPad? I think if I was going to spend this kind of money it would have to be on the bigger option but that's just me. I've got a feeling Dell will sell a ton of these little babies!