Newsletter
If you want to witness one of the most epic fail Android launches this year, look no further than the Dell Streak. The phone excited us when it was first revealed back in October 2009, but here we sit nearly eight months later and there is still no sign of an official release date or price.
We expected the Dell Streak to go on sale today, but the launch has been delayed. Dell now expects the Streak to go on sale “later this summer”. The phone’s pre-sale page had promised a release by the end of July, but the text has been updated to “soon”.
Things got more confusing when Dell temporarily posted the pricing for the Streak and then removed their blog post. When the post was live, it announced the Dell Streak would be available for $299 with new two-year AT&T contract or $549 without.
AT&T currently has a promo page for the Dell Aero on their site, but there is no mention of the Streak anywhere. At this time we are unsure if AT&T will offer their full support for the device or just allow it to exist much like their response to Google’s Nexus One.
Speaking of the Nexus One, Google already admitted that the direct distribution method failed when they closed their online store earlier this year. Dell has more experience at direct sales, but no Android phone has sold well unless it was tied with a carrier.
Finally, the biggest thing holding the Streak back is its quirky UI running on Android 1.6. I’m still having a hard time believing Dell would launch this new device with a firmware that was released last year, but it looks unavoidable. We thought maybe Dell had delayed the phone to upgrade the operating system, but a company spokesman confirmed to PCMag.com that the Streak “will in fact still launch with Android 1.6″.
I really wanted to like the Dell Streak and if it came out last summer I might have purchased one. At this point, the phone has been surpassed in performance by new models from Motorola and Samsung and the outdated software really is an eye sore.
Now we wait to see what Dell does next, but with every day that passes – more sales are lost.
Dude, are you getting a Dell?