It would appear those
leaked and
unintentional early peeks at Dell's first foray into smartphones did not happen in Brazil and China by accident. Hans Erickson of Dell Latin America has announced the decision to "give priority" to those two countries, who will be first to experience the Mini 3i's Android glory, with China receiving devices "in the coming days" and Brazil getting 'em later this year. Interestingly, China Mobile will be making do without 3G, while Brazil's Claro will be offering a 3G-enabled handset. Dell remains mum on pricing and the rest of the spec, though all the
information so far indicates that Brazilians will be able to buy the same WiFi-packing
FCC-certified 3iX handset that's
heading to the US. Either way, we've got another heavyweight's presence in the smartphone market, and we'll be even happier once we know what Dell's value-add will be.
Update: Official
Dell press release is out making it clear that this is just the "initial" smartphone from Dell.
[Via
Yahoo! Brazil, thanks Marcos R.]
posted Nov 13th 2009 6:31AM
Smart move by Dell putting Android in this thing.
Any other OS would have made it a forgettable also run.
It remains to be seen which version of the OS it will pack ( all of us Android addicts now pretend 2.0 eclair in our new devices) and if the processor and RAM can give some grunt and street cred to this innocuous looking thing.
Let's not forget that its contenders are called Droid and X10, which makes it kind of hard to bet on this Dell.
Of course I hope to be proved wrong and pleasently surprised by this thing, after all with its last products in the laptop department Dell has shown that it's willing and capable to bring new exciting gizmos to the eager geeky crowds.
When can we expect an "hands on" article by Endgadget in which it will be unfavourably compared to the iPhone?
Well I just hope that ATT gets an adroid device and hopefully this will be it. Im eligible for an upgrade soon and ive been wanting to check out Android or even that N900 from nokia. Im good with my 3Gs but i want to experience something different and i hear alot of good things from the android software.