Hi All,
Picked up the Dell Streak a couple of weeks ago and on the whole I have thoroughly enjoyed using it. There have been moments of complete frustration (I was previously using an iPhone so on top of new hardware I have an entirely new OS to understand). As you can guess by the last statement I have been using the device as a primary phone.
I will get to the pros and con's in a moment but wanted to mention about the hardware. It is a very well put together piece of kit BUT the screen is not as robust as widely advertised. Like an idiot I managed to drop the phone taking it out of my pocket; whilst sat down. The phone dropped about a foot and a half and as you can guess the screen shattered, bad luck possibly, but would say I have dropped a few phones from the same height and higher (including the iPhone) and most of the time they survived.
Now the breakdown:
PROS:
1/ The screen and size. As per the mainly held views on blogs etc. I am finding the screen fantastic. I also don’t find the size of the device at all impeding, it does help that I am 6’4 so have larger pockets than most but either way, not once has it interfered with what I want to do.
2/ The customization of the screens and more importantly standard apps (browser, email etc.). This is more to the user coming from a non-android background. It took me a while to get used to the idea of butchering the original core apps in favour of downloadable alternatives. It took me even longer to click about the extensiveness of Android multi-tasking (especially about shutting programs down and not killing the battery, I was seriously un-impressed over first few days about battery life till I realised my naive usage was some of the problem (will get to the battery in the cons.....)
3/ The hardware. Ignoring the shattered screen the device is built incredibly well, very little flex and not a single scratch on screen (as yet and unprotected). The speaker is very good (for a phone/tablet), it feels nice in your hands and certainly feels like it will take the rough and tumble, of daily portable use, well!
4/ Web Browsing. The combination of the large screen and blazingly fast processor; browsing the web, on this device, is by far and away the best I have ever used on a phone. I find myself trying to click out of ‘mobile’ sites continuously as the phone handles the desktop alternative extremely well.
5/ The knowledge that Android 2.2 is on its way and will hopefully knock a lot of the cons, below, off the list and make me extremely smug about my purchase!
6/ Phone signal. Hands down this phone has better phone signal than my previous iPhone and my blackberry before that. I haven’t compared against some non-smartphones as unfortunately I don’t know many people on the same network without a smartphone (or more precisely haven’t really researched before writing this). The download speeds over the network is also extremely quick and again much faster than the iPhone, but you would expect that with the increased level of protocols this device can handle.
EDIT: Would just have to add that I can't believe I didn't move to android earlier. The range of variation in apps and how to utilise them makes me realise why people have such a problem with Apples 'lockdown' approach to their iOS system. I am finding much MUCH more uses for this device than I ever did on the iPhone.
CONS:
1/ Software
- EMAIL: The standard email app I find extremely hard work. Initially it constantly ‘lost’ emails and had to re-download them each time, taking 5 minutes. This has now settled so could be a combination of user error and the SD card and internal flash needing to be re-formated (quite a few initial problems I had were due to this but assumed I was unlucky with mine as haven’t seen anyone else with the problem). If you also delete a new email that you don’t want like spam, it re-downloads the previous oldest email #50 again to bring the inbox to the set limit of ‘50’ emails and then notifies you that you have a new email which is about 3 days old and you have already read on the device??
- Phone app. This is pretty annoying. Your phone rings, you take it out of your pocket and answer it etc. Etc. but no. On the Dell you take it out of your pocket and start raising it to your ear and 50% of the time (presumably to the accelerometer kicking in) the phone goes a bit crazy between portrait and landscape and then goes to sleep? You then have the 10 second process of taking it out of sleep, choosing the phone app (starts at home screen) then clicking the current call before you can choose to answer, at which stage the caller has generally rung off. Again I can only hope they sort this on the update.
- WiFi: sometimes when the phone comes out of sleep the WiFi is on but won't reconnect with the network forcing you to reset the connection. Very minor but slightly irritating time wasting bug.
The remainder of apps are very good with a particular mention to google maps with full navigation. The GPS pick up is one of the best I have used and that is including some of the cheaper dedicated devices.
2/ Battery. EDIT: It was REALLY rubbish but problem was found to be Dell's own facebook app completely destroying battery life. Now deleted and battery is now very good.
Overall I am extremely happy with the device, a few very minor bugs aside I am really enjoying the experience and would recommend to anyone, or at least anyone who doesn't have small pockets.....