Remember the Dell Mini 3i, Dell’s China-only Android phone? Well it’s not China-only anymore.
Rumor has it that Dell will bring the Mini 3i to the U.S. in the next few months to compete with other Android phones coming down the pike from HTC, Samsung, and Motorola.
The phone, presumably still in its Chinese trade dress, felt “cheap and plasticky, like the Pre,” according our tipster. He believes it will be upgraded for the American market.
The phone has better hardware than the Chinese version and a slightly better camera – probably 5-megapixel over the Chinese 3-megapixel. It is slimmer than the iPhone and the interface mimics, as seen from this photo, the iPhone’s icon-based launcher UI.
Interestingly, Dell is splintering the Android stack and shipping the phone with modified or missing Android libraries, making it a bit harder to program. The tipster reported that some apps won’t work on this version.
Dell hasn’t sold a smartphone since the Axim X51, an ill-fated WinMo PDA-alike last sold in 2007. This return to the smartphone market seems to be a direct attack on the WinMo architecture as Dell could have easily gone with something like Windows Mobile 6.5.
We’ll have photos of the new phone this week but we’ll add this to our Palm Pre and Pixi announcements as interesting new phones from ostensibly U.S.-based companies.
Exclusive: Noone cares about Dell making a phone.
They failed at PDAs. They will fail again. It takes more than a “we’re doing Android too!” line these days.
Dell has never sold a smartphone. The X51 was a PDA, and a good PDA at that. The failure was guaranteed not by a bad product, but the arrival of smartphones which made their non-radio packing siblings kind of irrelevant.
I agree I had (have) an X51v which is equivalent of an open itouch. Used for music, videos, web browsing (WLAN), IR, games and GPS apps via bluetooth.
The X51v was just too niche (and probably large/complex) for the marketplace at the time.
You can find more high-quality screen shots of this phone at: http://bit.ly/EYsLs The phone looks good and I think Dell may have some market this time though!
Yeah after reading that review, I’m not excited at all
http://www.traderbots.com/stocks/Stock.aspx?symbol=dell
I would be very careful in writing off any tech player. The market can change drastically in a span of a year or two!
Dell wrote off Apple in 90s, see where it is today
Yeah: now Apple’s making expensive Dells.
I don’t see this phone competing very well with other cereal box freebies like the HTC Tattoo, but we’ll see. Nobody ever woulda thought Apple and Google would be fighting over pocket computers this year, either. I’m not discounting anybody.
Don’t hate
seriously, who think dell can come remotely close to apple, palm, or rimm (hack, even htc, motorola, and nokia) to design a relevant phone?
dell is a microsoft’s bi**h for selling its os and it should remain that for its remaining existence…
and one more thing… dell, don’t bother getting into service business compete with ibm, hpq… thats not going to work either…
i have a dell computer that is over 10 years old. and the hp i have died after only 5. so i would say dell is doing pretty well for it self.
and I’d say that’s completely irrelevant.
not if they can have the durability in their pcs continue in this phone
remotely close to, nokia?
i have a free nokia phone, that i swear i have to replace every year
yea… even nokia… have you heard of n97?
Yes I have, got rid of it after 1 week, had an E90 it quit after 14 months and Nokia repair shop said it couldn’t be repaired. Have an E66 which after 6 months of use works but the finish is peeling off. No more crap about Nokia durability, it has gone the way of the dino..BTW I have an old Inspiron 5000 after 12 years it is still going! (if only to stream music now)
If their phone is anywhere near as rock solid as their PC’s, I’m in. Time will tell.
+1 for more competition
I agree with this. I have a Dell that’s going on 7 years old and works like a charm. Just like the Japanese cars, they last seem to last forever!
There are so many Android phones being released. I guess an open system is the way to go.
用的竟然是网易移动的图片，我晕！
I’m definitely up for an android phone from Dell. For those who are calling this a ‘me too’ effort, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dell takes the lions share of the Android market.
People are always arguing over drugs,
yet I see cell phones as todays real drug of choice.
Go outside.
And actually leave your cell phone inside.
Try it. I dare ya!
> People are always arguing over drugs,
Huh? Like drug deals gone bad? Or what are you talking about?
ok, watch any old movie where someone finds a body or there is an accident. then imagine what would happen nowadays.
dell’s axim had potential, ‘cept no mobile solution. here’s to dell, and here’s to hoping their mobile hardware doesn’t match their desktop (even laptop) hardware
Good luck to Dell on this one. I’ll try to keep an open mind.
So are they going to use the normal Android or the chinese modified Androind , called OMS or ophone ? Since that not available in english.
OMS:
http://baike.baidu.com/view/813971.htm
tranlation:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbaike.baidu.com%2Fview%2F813971.htm&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Interesting move by Dell. Have to wait and see how it goes for dell. Where Nokia is moving to computing, Dell is moving to Mobile market.
Didn’t the Chinese version of this phone have WiFi disabled? Don’t know how good that would be if it’s carried over to the US>
Lets see if this is going to work. Thanks for sharing. Interesting information here.
Dell will never have the look of an iphone but they could well have the same capability. Write them off at your peril.
How about having a differnt look that is better than an iphone? that is possible
como trabaja android?? es ina buena pltaforma??
Android es una muy buena plataforma. En la opinion de muchos es mejor que la platorma de apple. La plataforma es creacion de google y puedes trabajar en multiples aplicaciones simultaneas cosa que no puedes hacer en el iphone de apple.
I’d be interested only if they don’t break the libraries and maintain an ACTUAL Android OS on the unit–not cripple it with some customization, as the article makes it sound.
Welcome.
certainly I love android phone but if this dell android phone surely compete it and let people choose what is the best.
The whole trip was pretty cool using my Mobile device as pretty much my be all,end all,for communications,navigation,etc.It
was great while it lasted,but as they say,all good things come to an end! Here’s hoping for even better things in the future.
Seems Dell’s gonna Rock in mobile segments also… Well, they are good in laptops and servers, and are best in customer service…
They can surely get customers for android mobiles, with a good marketing….
small is big:)
dell gonna make big in the mobile market
but let’s keep an open mindset.
hope we get another best product and in this competitive market “consumer are winner”..:)
it’s got no frontside camera.