Dell Streak(s) into Australian mobile market with Optus

Stuart Corner
Friday, 24 September 2010 05:18

Your IT - Mobility

Dell is to make its debut into the Australian mobile device market with the Dell Streak - an Android device that is part tablet part smartphone - exclusive to Optus.

The Streak - which launched in the UK in June - is being billed as a tablet, but is rather small by tablet standards. It has a five inch (13cm) screen and measures overall 15 x 8 x 1 cms, which makes it large for a phone, but unlike other tablets, which don't have voice calling, a phone it is.

Matt Telfer, Dell Australia's general manager for indirect and telecommunications channels, said: "It really is an all-in-one device that delivers a very good browsing experience and works as a phone'¦It's a tablet that you can make a phone call on."

Optus will offer it for $0 up front on a two year $59 per month contract, or will sell it outright for $649 from 1 October. The phone will be exclusive to Optus for three months. Telfer said: "We have no further plans beyond that. We will make individual announcements as and when appropriate."

However, he said the company did not plan to sell the Streak direct. "We are looking at the carriers as our main partners to market for these devices. We feel we need a partner with a strong network."

The touch-screen Streak has built-in WiFi, Bluetooth, a 5 megapixel main camera and a front screen camera. It has 2GB of internal storage and can take up to 32MB of SD Micro card (Optus will ship it with a 16GB card included). It is powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and at launch runs Android 1.6; support for 2.2 will come later.

The phone supports HSPA at 7.2Mbps and operates in the 2100, 1900, 900 and 850MHz bands, but does not support 3G in the 900MHz band which means it will only operate at GPRS data rates in parts of the Optus network in regional Australia.

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