Dell puts gun to Streak 5 tablet, pulls trigger Dell has discontinued its five-inch Dell Streak, a neither-fish-nor-fowl item that never quite caused consumers' pulses to pound. The death of the Streak 5 was announced on Dell's website on Thursday, along with the suggestion that streakers "Check out our other innovative Dell tablets and smartphones," including the Android 2 …
But market research (of which testing with users falls under the umbrella) only tells you so much. Quite often market research involves getting a bunch of people to try something out for financial reward (focus groups) and they're just so pleased to be there, they'll tell you what you want to hear.
Besides, unless they had to scrap a whole heap of unsold goods, I'm sure they either made some money off this, or at the very least expanded their knowledge in the mobile/tablet market.
It is a "Best of Breed Device" of the type which is designed by a product design committee to fit a business case derived from an excel spreadsheet with financial parameters.
Someone looked at a spreadsheet and thought that the idea of breeding a smartphone to a tablet is genuinely good proposition. Rather unsurprisingly the result was what you would get when you breed a Saint Bernard and a Chihuahua and had about the same chance of success.
Unlucky for Dell, Samsung's Galaxy SII won out on several specs I considered necessary.
So, it wasn't the screen size that prompted me to buy something else, it was more modern hardware in the Samsung.
I think 5" screens will come back sooner or later.
Cause that's about the largest size you can carry in a regular pocket on your body.
Kudos to Dell for making that.
Spot on Neil,
It's a pocket sized (just) tablet & e-reader that works very well in that role.
To date I haven't made or received a phone call on mine, but I guess I could if push came to shove.
I can't think of anything else on the market which meets my requirements of
1 Pocket transportable.
2 Decent screen size.
3 Good battery life (with bells & whistles turned off).
I wouldn't even use a smartphone as a mobile phone. Compared to my little nokia classic, they're big, slow, flakey, expensive, delicate and have a battery life so short it verges on ludicrous. Compared to my Streak 5, they've got irritatingly tiny screens and fiddly little OSKs, too.
Bigger tablets don't do it for me either. Like most netbooks, 10" tablets are just big enough to be an inconvenience. 7" is tolerable, I guess, but I rather like having something that I can stuff in a pocket and anything larger than the Streak won't even squeeze into all pockets.
Oh well. The trend towards making oversized smartphones with 4"+ screens seems like it might fill the niche in the future. Here's hoping.
when it seemed every man (or woman) and their dog was 'about to ship an iPad killer'.
So where is it? Pah.
normally, I avoid Dell kit (except that beautiful 24in display) but actually shipping something, upgrading the OS as well (are you listeneing certain smartphone makers?) they deserve a
thumbs up.
This device as the article said, was a bit of a odd one but the Newton was odd when it came out.
Had a few of these and the screens have broken so easily. Dell even came out a said having it in your pocket was dangerous. Combine with this not offering any kind of a repair service made phones with broken screens due to nothing more that sitting in a pocket into paper wieghts.
Also that one that I have had whose screen has survived, the motherboard has had to be replaced by Dell twice. Due to it crashing when you chuck anything that causes the GPU to get hot.
Got that one back yesterday and seems ok again for now.
No way would buy another mobile device from dell. The X51v I had just kept on working, but it looks like they cannot build mobile devices well any more.
This is a shame as it was quite an innovative product failed by lots of quality issues.
Have an ASUS transformer now and it has been rock solid.
Bollocks.
You may not do that but lots of people who I know want a telephone that phones and use a PDA/diary to keep track of their appointments (even me, who wouldn't pay the price for the smartphone contract and bought an iPod Touch to use as a PDA, at which it excels).
Not everyone is technically literate (trust me, my boyfriend isn't, the family isn't, the gameplaying friends aren't) and the commentards here really need to get a life and see what happens in the real world.
Y'know, I remember the days when El Reg's letters/comments section was actually worth reading because you'd actually learn something... with the exception of Lester and Lucy (come back soon), I'm not sure this site is actually worth the effort nowadays...
This reminds me 2002, 2003 & 2004 when iPod killers were trying to convince us that they are a better alternative to Apple's mp3 players. Now it's the iPhone & iPad killers.
Where are those commentators who predicted the end of the iPod, ridiculed the iPhone and predicted its utter failure, then laughed at the iPad as the most useless device ?
Your only power is to up vote what's against apple
The truth of the matter is that many know it all have no vision.
My phone is a 5" Streak, and I love it. However, it's use an actual phone is secondary to all the other uses it gets put to. Shame that it's being discontinued - I dropped mine the other day and it's now slightly dented (the glass is fine however). If it did get broken, there's nothing else on the market to replace it with.
Disingenuous publicity. Apple use it the whole time telling you how wonderful their nailed down fashion accessories are. I doubt they could sue you for telling the same misleading information about your stuff, but without that status as a pointless fashion accessory, it won't work.
People make better kit than apple but don't sell as much because they are not Apple. They just need to figure out how Apple makes their publicity work and they are away.
I have had a Streak since November last year and it's been great. I am not a small lad, so having a big screen is fine for fat fingers and bad eyesight. Upgrades have been a mess, but luckily there is enough of a community out there to get updates "fixed" to a point that the Dell releases are foced to work.
As for portability, fits fine in a shirt pocket, even if it's a little tall in some. It it very thin and so doesn't feel bulky even in the plastic case.
I might keep an eye out for a spare - since I am so used to it.
Bugger! Bugger! Bugger!
As a heavy PDA user and a light phone user, the 5" Streak was perfect for my needs, and now there is nothing in the market to replace it :-(
Like others here, I'm off to look for a spare in case anything happens to my current one.
Best mobile device I have ever had (and I started with the Psion 3, 3a, 3c, 5, then various HTC WinMo phones, Toshiba TG01, etc)
I have a feeling from the comments I am one of the few who feel this way, but I have a streak and love it.
I use it for web surfing, email, phone calls, text messages, the lot. I do get a lot of comments when using it as a phone, but thats normally along the lines of me looking like dom jolly.
I won't be giving up my Streak any time soon.
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