Early Hands-On Preview of Dell's Streak 7 Tablet 96
MojoKid writes "Dell recently started shipping their Streak 7 tablet and it's the highly anticipated big brother of Dell's 5-inch tablet, the Streak 5 that came out in September of 2010. The larger Streak 7 goes up against stiff competition with the likes of Samsung's Galaxy Tab, though the Streak 7 is retailing slightly lower with or without a contract through T-Mobile. Regardless, the Dell Streak 7 offers some pluses over the Galaxy Tab, like its 5MP rear-facing camera, but comes up short in other areas, such as its lower resolution (800x480) display — versus the Galaxy Tab's 1024x600 display. The Dell Streak 7 also has NVIDIA's Tegra 2 dual-core 1GHz processor under its hood for a rather snappy Android 2.2 experience, as you can see here in this early, hands-on preview of the device. In early benchmark testing, the Streak 7 is looking pretty strong versus the Galaxy Tab, which comes in neck-and-neck with the Streak 7 in Neocore, at around 54 FPS."
Pwns the galaxy S... (Score:3)
Re:Rubbish (Score:5, Informative)
Based on their past history, I have a feeling that they won't be upgrading the Galaxy Tab to Honeycomb, but that's just my opinion. Sorry, but the data supports the OP's point of view. He may have an axe to grind, but he has plenty of justification.
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Got any backup for claiming Apple prevents returns? No you don't. People don't want to return their Apple stuff, they just want to whine when it isn't perfect.
For iPhone returns, please refer to the iPhone Return Policy section below. For eligible Mac, iPad, iPod, and third-party products, you have up to 14 calendar days from the time you receive your item(s) to initiate a return. Personalized iPods (e.g., engraved or customized in any way) may not be returned for refund or exchange under any circumstances unless such product is Dead on Arrival (see the section below for more detailed information on such Dead on Arrival products). If the item is returnable and you send it back to us unopened in the original box, Apple will offer you a refund based on your original method of payment. You must return the product to the Apple warehouse within 14 calendar days of the issuance of the RMA. All products must be packed in the original, unmarked packaging including any accessories, manuals, documentation, and registration that shipped with the product.
Re:Pwns the galaxy S... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not sure about "owning the iPad". There's a lot of things to dislike about Apple - i'm certainly no fanboi - but the user interface response of the iPad isn't one of them. I was looking at Android tablets just yesterday, tried out a Galaxy Tab in the flesh and it seemed clunky and slow compared to my iPad. This is before I'd read any reviews that basically also slammed the performance. With my iPad, it responds instantly to swipes and taps, the Galaxy seemed to be having serious problems responding to events - especially in its web browser. Yes, it's a cheaper device, but the specs are not far from the ones in the iPad.
I'm working on apps for both iOS and Android at the moment (don't bother looking on my website - hasn't been updated for about 10 years ;-) ) and the difference in performance on both the devices and the emulators is striking. Obviously it doesn't help that the Android tablets are currently running operating systems designed for phones. I'll be interested to see how Honeycomb performs on live kit. I really hope it does fix the performance problems.
I might as well rant about the Android emulator while I'm on it - it's virtually unusable on any hardware I have - a well specced iMac, and even my gaming rig with 12GB RAM and an i7 950 can only run it at about 70% of the speed of an old Google G1! (528mhz phone with 192MB RAM) I mean come on! The iPhone simulator is doing the same job, and easily outpaces the hardware phone. I was using emulators 10 years ago on a PC with far lower specs that ran flawlessly. The excuses for the lamentable performance that I've read are centered around the Android emulator being an accurate emulation of all aspects of the platform. This is all well and good, but if it means it's too slow to accurately emulate the speed of even the slowest hardware, then it's pointless. I hope to god that someone at Google is sorting this out, because bad toolsets are one of the biggest turnoffs to developers.
Re:Pwns the galaxy S... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure about "owning the iPad". There's a lot of things to dislike about Apple - i'm certainly no fanboi - but the user interface response of the iPad isn't one of them. I was looking at Android tablets just yesterday, tried out a Galaxy Tab in the flesh and it seemed clunky and slow compared to my iPad. This is before I'd read any reviews that basically also slammed the performance. With my iPad, it responds instantly to swipes and taps, the Galaxy seemed to be having serious problems responding to events - especially in its web browser. Yes, it's a cheaper device, but the specs are not far from the ones in the iPad.
From what I've heard this is due to differences in the way the two operating systems work. iOS takes an approach that the UI should always be responsive and fluid at the expense of other things. Load a /. article and have it display hundreds of comments and start scrolling like mad towards the top. It'll scroll smoothly, but eventually you'll hit a point where it hasn't rendered that part of the page so you don't actually see anything there until it renders it (usually a second or so). Android on the other hand will load the entire page and render it, but trying to scroll through all of it will cause things to appear choppy. Things get even worse if there are a lot of Flash elements on the page. The device prioritizes those over UI touch events so it starts to feel clunky at times. Comes down to different design philosophies.
Re:Pwns the galaxy S... (Score:4, Insightful)
One can imagine how this sort of thing happens... the Apple engineer hands the prototype to the Steve, and the first time it stutters he gets smacked, The Google engineer hands the prototype to whatever-his-name-is, and the first time it stutters they say, "oh well, it'll ship, it's up to the HTC guys to come up with a fast enough processor." Nice to just do the OS, huh?
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Or they were busy implementing other things, like browser plugin support (Flash), live wallpaper, widgets, object sharing, wifi tethering, voice recognition, requiring to effectively make two copies of the api (Native and Dalvik), a push notification system that doesn't just send tiny numbers and symbols, etc. Android's functionality is a lot greater, and that's the target audience Google was aiming for first -- those who want functionality and freedom, not the common everyday person -- they knew they had
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Doesn't Android use QEMU for its emulator? Is ARM QEMU running Debian/etc similarly slow on your machines?
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I have no idea if this is the case but an iPhone simulator should have little need to emulate *anything*.
Sans ARM assembly, the Xcode environment should transparently cross compile objective-c. Darwin is the common platform, so ios libraries on OSX would be trivial to implement. The main difference being that ioswrites directly to the screen whereas the simulator would write to an OSX window. Hence a good simulator would run your iPad app *natively*.
And since Mach-O supports multiple CPUs, don't be surpris
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I have no idea if this is the case but an iPhone simulator should have little need to emulate *anything*.
Sans ARM assembly, the Xcode environment should transparently cross compile objective-c. Darwin is the common platform, so ios libraries on OSX would be trivial to implement.
This is what the iPhone simulator does, when targeting the iPhone simulator you get x86 binaries that use iOS libraries also built for x86.
It does a great job of making sure your code will all basically run well. What it does mean t
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Cool, thanks. That of course would explain the vast performance difference if Android emulates an entire phone!
As for simulating Android on desktop Linux sans emulator, stayed tuned for IcedRobot which is set to be announced this weekend at Fosdem.
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Not only did it mean - in both cases - that the emulator ran many times faster than the actual hardware, the fact that they were doing a WINE approach to the target OS meant that lots of things which worked fine in the emulator would die horribly on the actual device. Maybe Apple actually did a decent job of it, but I've seen this approach go wrong more times than I care to remember.
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Other than performance I've not really had an issue ever in years of use, where something worked on the simulator and not on the device. Since they are both running the same libraries this makes good sense...
I prefer the simulator to be a rapid prototyping platform and the device to be the final test-bed. Something needs to be fast somewhere to make development quick, it may as well be the simulator.
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This is a very interesting point about the emulator. I haven't tried one yet, but I was thinking of downloading Meego (though I don't have a Linux PC right now - so I'd have to wait for Mac or Windows versions) and Android emulators and playing with them side by side as a way help make a decision on which platform to go to. I'm leaving iOS after trying an iPhone 3g for a few years. Among other things - I will never forgive Apple for crippling this model with iOS4 and then not supporting a downgrade to iO
Re:Pwns the galaxy S... (Score:5, Informative)
With my iPad, it responds instantly to swipes and taps, the Galaxy seemed to be having serious problems responding to events - especially in its web browser. Yes, it's a cheaper device, but the specs are not far from the ones in the iPad.
Apple did a good job on optimizing specific applications, and they trade off memory and speed. That's a nice touch if you happen to run just a few Apple apps, but it only goes so far. Once you start using other apps and once multitasking comes into play, the iPad can hang and stutter with the best of them. (Also, a lot of the apps that you run on the Tab don't even come from Google, they come from Samsung.)
In practice, the Galaxy Tab works well; it isn't as sleek or polished or impressive as the iPad, but I find it actually a lot more useful.
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The only real contender in the next wave of tablets seems to be RIM's PlayBook. The videos out so far are pretty amazing -- dare I call it revolutionary?
It steals all the best of WebOS in terms of UI and the hardware is top-notch. It's smooth and responsive even when multitasking wtih several CPU intensive tasks.
It really makes the Streak 7 and Xoom tablets, which feel like an incremental upgrade to the iPad, seem outdated.
If the iPad 2 doesn't bring something new to the game, we could see a major shift i
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The only real contender in the next wave of tablets seems to be RIM's PlayBook. The videos out so far are pretty amazing -- dare I call it revolutionary?
It steals all the best of WebOS in terms of UI and the hardware is top-notch. It's smooth and responsive even when multitasking wtih several CPU intensive tasks.
It really makes the Streak 7 and Xoom tablets, which feel like an incremental upgrade to the iPad, seem outdated.
If the iPad 2 doesn't bring something new to the game, we could see a major shift in the tablet market this year.
How come it can not do BlackBerry email when it is a BlackBerry device? You need to mate it with a BlackBerry phone. The iPad does email in spades and it doesn't need an iPhone.
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How come it can not do BlackBerry email when it is a BlackBerry device?
It does when paired -- nice, as you get all of the security and none of the administrative overhead.
There are a few rumors floating around that the software will be updated for the 3g and 4g versions to support BB email without pairing. Of course, this doesn't stop you from using any of the third-party email applications available or web-based mail.
You need to mate it with a BlackBerry phone.
This is actually one of the coolest features of the PlayBook. I can turn off the BB bridge connection and all my data, files, etc. are no longer on the PlayBoo
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Hell will freeze over before I buy another Blackberry. Those devices are awful.
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Why do you think Dell will be any different? Dell does the same thing with their consumer laptops -- halting support 5-6 months after release, official drivers 6-10 months old. Dell had no problem leaving one of my laptops with a broken and severely outdated switchable-GPU stack (which they could have fixed). They are better than HP and Toshiba are, but that's not saying much now is it?
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Samsung has been pushing out updates for the Galaxy Tab regularly. Updates on the Tab have been much more frequent than on the Galaxy S as far as I can tell.
Was the Tab overpriced? Well, yes, in the sense of having a huge markup over the hardware. But the Tab was the only product in its category, and they are on target for selling all the ones they made. In the end, it's supply and demand, not cost, that sets the price. The Tab was meant and priced for early adopters and people who really needed an And
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Except competitors already have NFC, competitors already had >200PPI on PDAs, phones, and tablets well before the iPhone 4 launched (though in fairness, the jump to ~330PPI did leapfrog all but one or two), etc.
Personally, much as I'd like the battery life of an ARM tablet over an Atom machine, until they can match my U820's 1280x800 5.6" screen, I'll get by with the 820 and an N900.
Not the next iPad (Score:3)
The next Pad supposedly has the same resolution display, but a screen that's improved in terms of glare and angled viewing.
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NFC on a 10" tablet is silly; you need NFC on phones. Nokia has had that for years, and Google is getting it. Apple? Nothing.
As for resolution, 1200x800 or so is fine for a 7"-10" tablet; higher resolutions give you a little more snap, but otherwise are wasted. They can wait a few more years until batteries and processor catch up.
The real question... (Score:4, Insightful)
Which one will be able to be upgraded to Honeycomb? I wouldn't buy an Android tablet before their tablet version of software became available, regardless of the hardware. Are there any upgrade paths that *either* vendor (Dell or Samsung) has specified? I feel some early adopters will be left out in the cold.
Re:The real question... (Score:4, Insightful)
The best answer is "if it didn't come with Honeycomb, don't assume it will".
Buy it for what it has now, not what it might have. After all, there are tons of people who were promised upgrades only to be left stranded, so it's best to assume that what you buy now is what you're stuck with.
Most likely you'll be able to get Honeycomb through hacks at the very least, but buying now to get a future upgrade is a losing proposition. Best to wait for the Honeycomb tablets to come first.
This is especially so when you buy Android devices that come with 1.6 firmware, too.
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However tablets are a bit of a different ballgame, how much different is hard to say though.
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Of course end users are always free to install their own homebrew firmware. So they're not entirely left out in the cold.
Re:The real question... (Score:5, Informative)
This is what I think is stupid about android. It's touted as being "open" but you are left depending on the manufacturer of the device to upgrade the software. You should be able to download the software directly from Google and install it on any tablet.
Well, actually you can. The source code for Android is freely available [android.com], and you can literally roll your own. That's exactly what's been going on with heaps of Android phones right now, that are happily running Gingerbread long before the manufacturers have even thought about releasing an update.
Where the model falls down, though, is in the hardware drivers -- for my phone, an HTC Desire, developers are still waiting on Google's long-promised-but-never-delivered OTA update to the Nexus One in order to grab the proprietary hardware drivers for the device. Don't misunderstand me -- everything works right now, and very well too -- but not quite as well as it might with the proprietary drivers.
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This is a great example of the disconnect that exists between (many) /. users and the rest of the world. I don't want a pad or phone that I need to roll my own for. Phones and pads are appliances that I expect to turn on and work. When I want to write software, I have the tools for that already, sitting on my desk.
It's a paradigm shift (gar - can't believe I wrote that) But the IPad is already making life a lot easier for a lot o
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I don't get the attitude that Gingerbread is somehow unsuited to tablets. The definitions of "tablet" vs "phone" are arbitrary and mostly dictated by marketing anyway. A couple of years ago we would have called a 4 inch device a tablet, and look where we are now.
But to answer your question, Samsung at least are apparently planning on sticking with Android 2.X on 7 inch class devices and 3.X on the 10 inch class, and I have to say this seems like a good move. Having used the wife's Galaxy Tab fairly extensiv
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The definitions of "tablet" vs "phone" are arbitrary and mostly dictated by marketing anyway.
The classic blunder of the computer nerd: over-generalization.
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Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me know when honeycomb is out. Since these devices are all going to be treated as abandonware there's no point in buying into a dead end that will be obsolete in months.
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Generally true, but the Tegra 2/Android platform is so standardized now that most of the ROMs are easily portable between devices, and there's a very healthy community on XDA Developer forums building, porting and supporting ROMs and useful apps for Tegra 2 tablets. Especially for the G Tablet, because we have kernel source available unlike some of the other devices out there.
I'm running a port of the Advent Vega ROM on my Viewsonic G Tablet, and there's a port of the Notion Ink ROM now too.
CyanogenMod run
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Word, I'm rockin TnTLite on my Viewsonic G Tablet, and it works great! Flash videos on websites under the DolphinHD browser works like a dream in fullscreen... no stuttering like with my eeePC 901 (I'm sure this has more to do with the intel GPU... the nVidia ION atom platform can run smoothly).
Also have my old bluetooth GPS tethered to it so I can use navigation apps, and of course I have it tethered to my phone. The only thing it still lacks from a fully-featured Android device (other than 3G) is a magn
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So if your Dell Streak can take Linux and any telco you found to be cheap/value it would better.
I'm still holding out. (Score:1)
linky: http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/21/toshiba-launches-flashy-tablet-teaser-site-still-doesnt-have-a/ [engadget.com]
Specs Meh (Score:5, Interesting)
Power drain appears to be drastic.
Screen rez being lower than the Tab is going to be annoying.
And releasing a 2.x version device NOW when if they'd wait a couple of weeks they could do 3.0?
Then again, the Tab was nobbled by not allowing regular voice calls in the US.
But at least it's price is better, but overall a lesser experience when Android Tab makers should be aiming far higher.
Dell, what are you doing?
How to make a decent 7" Android Tablet /think/ of less on a 10" device.
Tegra appears to work well. Don't be afraid of standardising on it.
Latest version of Android, whatever version that is.
Full Bluetooth support so we can pair up devices
HDMI output so we can use it with bigger screens if we want to.
Speaking of HDMI port, if you need to use a non-standard port then split out the hdmi? well, if you have to, but make a standard USB port too for us to charge/connect upto.
Voice calling as an option, not limited. Let me choose to pay a phone company 50 bucks a month and make you more money, don't limit us
Standard Android UI, no motoblur/horrible stuff we only load a newer launcher over anyway
1024x600 at least (Tab's display really is bright and clear. Should be the bare minimum rez for future devices, 7" at least, and don't even
Decent speakers (again, the Tab does pretty good here)
Clean edges. Glass fronted. Tab/Ipad/Streak, cover the full front of the screen. Not try and jam in terrible trackpad controls like the cheap version being sold in BestBuy atm.
Rootable. (if you want to put the entire bootable OS part on a seperate SDcard inside that's not easily accesible? Go for it, but these devices WILL be hacked. Making it repairable as people learn helps make a better device for customer/client.)
Accept that some people will use them landscape, some portrait, take into account button/headphone positioning. Don't try and force landscape. (again, launchers help us get around this, so... save some time!)
More blue LEDs please
Battery life is crap (Score:5, Informative)
Battery life with screen at 65% brightness, WiFi on, playing standard definition video.
Dell Streak 7: 3:26
Archos 70: 6:00
Samsung Galaxy Tab: 6:09
Archos 101: 7:20
Apple iPad : 9:33
The Galaxy Tab outclasses this thing in just about any conceivable manner.
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Also,
In early benchmark testing, the Streak 7 is looking pretty strong versus the Galaxy Tab, which comes in neck-and-neck with the Streak 7 in Neocore, at around 54 FPS."
Despite the self-contradictory way this sentence was worded, they benchmark nearly the same.
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My iPad gives me a good 10 hours of battery life if I watch video, and a whopping 30+ hours of light reading and browsing.
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Quoting Apple's insanely inflated battery life figures is going to get you no credit. It for one is lucky to get three to four hours in practical use.
I could give up browsing /. when I see a typical misinformed post like the above quote. I have an iPad that can still easily beat 9 hours off the battery after ten months use. This isn't your Daddy's net book or laptop with an exaggerated battery life. The iPad display is over twice as big as those Android seven inch devices. You would think the Androids would get at least twice the battery life on a dinky seven inch screen instead of a lot less!
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Huh, well, the Viewsonic G Tablet is a Tegra 2 tablet that gets in the 6-7 hour range playing video. So this is either an issue with the battery capacity on the Streak (could just be a smaller battery in that smaller form factor tablet) or a software issue with their ROM/video playback software.
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Doing it wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are reviewing a new tablet based on FPS and hardware benchmarks then I bet you are one of those people who still can't understand why the iPad is owning the market.
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mod parent up times infinity.
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ipad lost 20% of the market to Android last quarter, and we haven't even seen most of the major devices released for sale yet.
Android will wipes the floor with Apple in tablets just as it has in the smartphone arena. It has nothing to do with hardware specs, at least you're right about that.
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And 16% are being returned.
check your facts [gizmocrunch.com]
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It's not android that wipes floor but army of manufacturers who want piece of the market. The android just happens to be a convenient operating system to install. Would apple had licenced it's iOS to other manufacturers the android wouldn't had a chance even on phone arena.
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I think you're in for a rude wake up. Soon Android will see it's phone sales plummet on Verizon and you'll see what the first head to head competition looks like. You'll also see Android tablets come out left and right and they won't make a dent in iPad sales this year. Apple brought this new touchscreen tablet market alve with iPad and I don't see any compelling alternatives on the horizon.
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The Galaxy Tab and Streak 7 absolutely trounce the iPad in the "Big Sack of Shit" category.
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The Galaxy Tab and Streak 7 absolutely trounce the iPad in the "Big Sack of Shit" category.
That seems to be the honest consensus at Engadget.
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Benchmarks, no, but HW features make a big difference sometimes. Obviously the iPhone's biggest praise is its resolution. But personally, after using the HDMI out on my phone, I could never go back to a phone without it (unless it had wifi display support).
AirPlay (Score:1)
But personally, after using the HDMI out on my phone, I could never go back to a phone without it (unless it had wifi display support).
That's exactly what Apple is supporting with AirPlay, WiFi display support.
You have to have either an AppleTV, or some other device that supports AirPlay attached to the TV (there are servers now for Windows/Mac and I think possibly some for various homebrew media systems).
Yeah HDMI support in phones (Score:2)
is the numero uno top maximum priority most people look for in a phone.
Right.
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but, but, then Phoronix can't review it!
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Re:Bad name choice (Score:4, Insightful)
What is with these names, anyhow? Streak? Pad?
What's next? Stain? Chunk? Smear? Dingleberry?
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> What's next? Stain? Chunk? Smear? Dingleberry?
Please, no. Think of the poor Microsoft marketing department who must find a less appealing name than anything else out there. The last thing we need to see is a multi-billion dollar ad campaign for the "Microsoft Herpes Phone".
"Highly Anticipated" (Score:3)
By whom? Who is anticipating this aside from a handful of people on gadget blogs?
This is running smartphone OS on a tablet that's kinda-sorta not really a tablet and has been disowned by Google as "not ready."
Sometimes I wonder if the editors here are even paying attention.
By the way, Engadget gave it a pretty dismal score as far as gadgets go. 4/10
Neocore (Score:2)
I don't have much time to type so a quicky here: what a load of crap.
I read a lot of bad comments here re: Samsung and updates and Tab quality / speed. Samsung updates just fine, the international model of the SGS for example has had Froyo for almost half a year now. Just not your carrier branded models. The Tab slow ? No way. If you're running a couple of apps, it lags less than the iPad does. The Tab is a great device - though soon there will be much better - but the Streak simply isn't it. The only reall
doesn't make phone calls (Score:2)
i won't buy it cos i can't make phone calls on it without add-ons