The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Dell is entering the US wireless handset market with help from AT&T. Expected as early as next year, the phone could be among the first on Ma Bell's network. This would be Dell's first foray into the US market, but not their first overall. The OPhone (Mini 3i) was announced for China Mobile back in August.
From the sound of things, Dell still has some work to do if they expect the phone to succeed here in the states. According to a CrunchGear tipster, the phone felt “cheap and plasticky, like the Pre" although he believes there's still some cosmetic surgery ahead. The camera gets a boost from 3-megapixel to presumably something in the vicinity of 5-megapixels.
The worst part in all of this is a rumor that Dell has splintered the Android stack and plans releasing it with modified and/or missing libraries. Not only does this make things more difficult for developers, but some apps simply won’t work. Not exactly the kind of thing Android users wanna hear.
17 Responses to “Good News, Bad News: Dell’s Android Handset AT&T Bound” Leave a reply ›
Well, Verizon's CEO did say that, "you either have an open device or you don't." ..... Let's hope Dell doesn't lean to the "don't" side.
It could be good news if they splinter the stack-- if it's an unmitigated failure that becomes a cautionary tale to other phone makers considering the same thing.
Otherwise, yeah, it's bad news.
All beginning is hard... Hopefully Dell will learn in time.
I put 0 faith in the opinion of an anonymous "Crunchgear Tipster". Why do you?