Dell Mini 5 is too expensive, too late
Posted by Jeff Morgan (01/29/2010 @ 2:32 am)
Dell first showed us the Mini 5 at CES this year, but it was a quiet affair. The five-inch tablet has all the trappings of a smartphone in a much bigger package and at a much higher price tag. With the iPad announcement, the Dell’s tablet looks out of place, and it has to get a whole lot cheaper before anyone will take it seriously.
In case you didn’t hear about it (a lot of people didn’t), the Mini 5 is a thousand dollar slate running Android 1.6. As far as I can tell it’s about an iPhone and a half in terms of size. The device has a 5 megapixel camera, Bluetooth and 3G support, all running on a 1GHz Snapdragon. In terms of specs, it’s pretty comparable to the iPad, but look at that price tag. $1,000? For that? Really the only improvement it makes over the iPad is that camera, which is definitely not worth $500. You could argue that Android is the key here, but 1.6? What is this, 2009?
Qualcomm has a 1.5GHz Dual-Core Snapdragon
Posted by Jeff Morgan (01/08/2010 @ 8:00 pm)
Go ahead and read that one more time. Yes, the same line of chips that drives the Nexus One has been updated, pushed all the way to 1.5GHz with the help of a dual-core infrastructure.
It always sounds a little trite to talk about technology in this way, but I am, honestly and truly, a little blown away here. That kind of power was hardly available in laptops just a couple years ago. Less than half a decade ago. I know a LOT of people still running computers on slower chips than that. Madness.
Qualcomm’s announcement wasn’t just for the dual-core technosex. Luis Pineda, a Senior VP at Qualcomm, also wanted us to know about the single-core update, bringing chip model 8X50A up to 1.3 GHz. In case you were wondering, the dual-core chip is indeed for smartphones, not just netbooks, and can handle 1080p video. Let the drooling begin.
Google dogfood testing the Google Phone
Posted by Jeff Morgan (12/13/2009 @ 5:59 pm)
Earlier this weekend, tweets started showing up from Google employees about a new phone. The new phone. The Google Phone. I wrote about it last month, based on a report from TechCrunch that claimed we’d see it in early 2010. Google has given the phone, which is made by HTC, to wide array of workers to field test it, or as the Google blog calls it, dogfooding.
From what few pics are available, the phone looks great. It’s got a sizable OLED screen, runs on a Snapdragon, and thankfully has no hardware keyboard. I’m not just excited about the hardware, though. Google has designed the entire experience here, something I’ve waited for them to do since Android launched. Sure, they’ve contributed on the UI for the G1 and the Droid, but this is the whole package, all from Google. They’ll be selling the device directly as an unlocked GSM device. That means T-Mobile or AT&T, to be released some time in early (likely January) 2010.
One of the earliest tweets says this: “Google Phone = iPhone + a little extra screen and a scroll wheel. Great touch screen, and Android.” Is this really comparable to the iPhone, or is it something completely different?
Posted in: iPhone, Mobile, News
Tags: android, android phone, best android phone, google phone, htc, htc nexus one, htc passion, iphone killer, oled, snapdragon