Last month dell brought out the Dell Streak (or Mini 5) for the UK market (the US market is strangely still waiting) so I now have one in the household to play with.

I have spent various hours playing with all the features and the Android Market place so thought I would put a review together.

The Setup

Pulling the Streak out of the box and setting up was painless (no mini-sim here!) and the phone came with the usual partial charge so I was able to turn it on and play for a while before giving it a full charge. You did not need to connect it to a PC to start using it (unlike Apple’s iPhone’s, iPod Touch or iPADs) and it worked without any issues.

Getting started

Out of the box it still comes with the rather old Android 1.6 operating system (or OS) so this lets it down slightly on the multi-touch front as some of the built in apps (Google Earth) wont accept pinch to zoom without 2.1 or higher.

Good points are the nice interface Dell have built just for the Mini-series phones/tablets (the Streak is just the first). As this works nicely on the big widescreen. Although this is let down by the fact that you can’t rotate the home screen to a more walking friendly portrait mode (apps and games do work with rotation though).

Moving on

Once you have the home screen setup just the way you like, it is time to explore the Android Marketplace. This is a feature that dell have not messed around with (for the better) and is the same as any stock Android device. Firstly you setup an account (or use your existing Google/GMail account) and then add a payment card to Google Checkout (think PayPal but Googled). When this is all done you can go and explore the shop and find some applications, games or screen widgets.

Rooting

As standard with most Android powered devices, the streak comes root protected. This is to stop people accidentally screwing up the device. However, if you wish to get to some of the more powerful features like sharing your 3G connection with your laptop – you will need to “root” your phone.

Luckily somebody was able to come up with the method to root the Streak very quickly and it can be done fairly simply (I will cover that in another post) and then gives you advanced features with very little risk.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• User replaceable battery
• Large Screen
• Multitouch
• SD HC Compatible user replaceable memory

Cons

• Runs currently on Android 1.6
• Large to hold against your head as a phone
• Twice daily recharges if used for heavy internet usage

The final word

I think this is a very nice device, but the size may not be to everybody’s taste. If you are not going to be making many outside calls – or are happy with a headset of some sort this is a good device for you. Browsing the web does not feel like a chore as you can fit most normal sites on the screen with very little scrolling or zooming.

7 out of 10