The Dell Streak is available for preorder Aug. 12—and goes on sale Aug. 13 on the AT&T network. But smartphone lovers and Dell fans may still want a peek at the rumored Dell Thunder, a prototype Dell smartphone that Engadget reports it has secured some—albeit dark and wobbly—video footage of.
The site’s “tipster” shows off a 4.1-inch display, a long and lean
device body and reports that the camera is 8 megapixels, with an LED
flash and 720p video-capture capabilities. Plus—a big perk,
particularly in iPhone land—the Thunder features a removable battery.
Like the Streak, the Thunder also runs Google’s Android operating system.
“His prototype’s running vanilla Android 2.1 at present, though the
final units can probably be expected to ship with Dell’s custom skin on
top,” reports Engadget. “Screen resolution is purportedly 800 x 480,
though judging by that 7 x 4 icon grid up there and our tipster’s own
experience, it could be even higher.”
Since Dell’s November 2009 introduction of the Android-running Mini
3, the Texas-based PC maker has released a number of phones in foreign
markets. At a June meeting with reporters,
however, Dell CEO Michael Dell hinted at a still-grander business plan
in which Dell has positioned itself to benefit on two ends. In addition
to tapping into the $100 billion smartphone market, the company offers
much of the backend infrastructure that supports much of the
cloud-based data such devices tap into.
“There has to be servers and storage to support all the data that is
being pulled by users and this is an exciting opportunity for us,” Dell
told reporters.
The reporters’ meeting followed an annual gathering of Dell
executives, where Michael Dell described his company’s commercial
business as picking up. Customers, he said, are interested in storage,
virtualization and cloud-computing infrastructures. Currently, 19 of
the 25 data center “farms” that serve the world’s biggest search, Web
2.0 and social-networking companies use Dell’s technology, said Dell,
and the company had signed contracts with two of the remaining six top
data center farms.
“We are feeling much better about our outlook this year,” Dell told analysts at a morning session during the annual meeting.
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