Reviewing the Latest Smartphone Leak: Dell Unleashes Thunder, Lightning, Flash and Smoke
April 22, 2010 - By Jose A. Gutierrez
At first glance, the names following the familiar Dell brand name sound like a list of special effects from the next Sci-Fi Summer blockbuster, right? It seems that hot on the heels of Apple’s now infamous and inadvertent iPhone 4G leak by Gray Powell, Dell has had the misfortune of experiencing a product leak of their future smartphones. This time, not one, but four devices, have been revealed.
Reportedly Dell has been hard at work on reentering the smartphone market with a bang, since the untimely death of the Dell Axim line of Windows Mobile PDAs some years back. Fortunately for us all, this leak involved no beer, no bar, no apologetic employee, no “give us back our unit”, or any other semblance of drama. It all happened with a good, old-fashioned direct leak of pictures, specifications, and description of features, to the perennial tech news outlet, Engadget.
Dell Lightning (Photo Credit: Engadget.com)
Dell Lightning: The most “striking” of the four devices, originally posted on Engadget, is the Lightning. The only Windows Phone 7-powered device of the four has the potential to be a powerhouse with its portrait slider design targeted to “Busy professionals who know how to live life to the fullest”. The portrait slider concept is interesting, providing a large 4.1 screen with a full tactile QWERTY keyboard that does not add much bulk to the phone as is often the case with horizontal sliders. It also appears to be easier to operate with one hand, unlike previous Windows Mobile flagship phones like the HTC Tilt. What do the technical specs look like?
The device features: 1GHz Snapdragon processor, WVGA 4.1-inch OLED display, Quad-band GSM with AT&T and T-Mobile 3G, five megapixel autofocus camera, 1GB of flash with 512MB RAM plus 8GB of storage on a MicroSD card, GPS, accelerometer, compass, FM radio, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 EDR and USB 2.0 HS, Windows Phone 7 OS to include full integration with Zune and Zune marketplace and mobile gaming provided by Xbox Live. Did we mention that it also has Full Flash and Silverlight support including the ability to play Flash video? An interesting point highlighted by Engadget is that this Phone should be getting an upgrade to LTE in Q4 of 2011.
The other three devices are Android 2.1 (Froyo) powered with Dell’s design touches on the user interface.
Dell Thunder (Photo Credit: Engadget.com)
Dell Thunder: With the same 4.1 inch WVGA OLED super display as the Lightning, the Thunder is targeted to Geek Shui Living readers, based on Dell’s description of the target audience as “Creative, imaginative people. Early adopters, heavy users, influencers of technology”. The key points on this unit are the built-in Facebook and Twitter integration with support for Flash 10.1.
Dell Flash (Photo Credit: Engadget.com)
Dell Flash: This Android-powered device has a design similar to that of the Dell Thunder, but the Flash boasts a 3.5-inch WVGA TFT display targeted more at mainstream smartphone users. TV-out support and media feature are several of the key features, with H.264 and WMV video editing capabilities. While reviewing the specifications, one feature that jumped out as truly astonishing is the reported 725-hours of standby and 12-hours of talk time provided by its 1300 mAh battery.
Dell Smoke (Photo Credit: Engadget.com)
Dell Smoke: This model may be an attempt to “smoke” the BlackBerry Pearl line of devices, targeted to purposeful and practical individuals who need core business functionality. It features exchange support for multiple accounts and has a portrait-oriented physical keyboard and 2.8 inch QVGA screen. The Smoke promises to be competitively priced and available sometime around Q2 2011.
