Dell's first Android smartphone for the US is now here. Called the Dell Aero, the handset brings a stylish form, decent-sounding specs and an attractive price tag.
Originally touted as "the world's lightest Android phone," it now has to settle for being "one of the lightest." Despite that, it's still quite the compact package, measuring 122 x 57.9 x 11.7 mm and weighing 104 grams. One odd thing to note: Dell put the Home, Menu and Back buttons on the side of the phone, rather than the bottom of the screen, reportedly, to keep the front panel all sleek and nice-looking.
Details of the handset include a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen (with a Symbian-like 640 x 360 resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio), a 5.0 megapixel camera with LED flash, aGPS, tri-band HSDPA, WiFi, stereo Bluetooth and microSD card expansion (2GB preloaded, expandable up to 32GB). Operation is run by a 624MHz CPU, which isn't half bad, considering the market it's aiming for.
The phone's biggest sticking point, however, is the fact that it's running Android 1.5 - something that even the lowliest devices we've seen have been foregoing as their built-in OS. Dell does dress it up heavily with a custom UI, although it is still disappointing (especially, with no word of an OTA update coming). It's got all of the familiar Google apps and Android messaging features.
Priced at $99.99 (with a two-year contract from AT&T), the Dell Aero is actually a very attractive offering - if not for the fact that it's running a retardedly old version of Android. With that said, the hardware does seems solid, so we'll let you decide whether this is worth dropping your entry-level smartphone budget on.
[via Gizmodo]
