Dell Streak

[Shibblet]

I just got done reading about 16.7 million reviews on the upcoming Dell Streak.

My favorite responses to these reviews are the ones where people say things like "Wow, Dell really messed up by releasing the Streak with Android 1.6 instead of the new 2.2."

So, I have to ask... Are people really that dumb? Am I the only one that can see this clearly?

Dell builds this little piece of hardware, and gets it up and running with Android 1.0. It goes through the entire marketing "rigamarole". Revisions are made, and tweaks are adjusted, and they upgrade to Android 1.6. Finally the product is ready to launch, and it has launched in the U.K.

So, here's the part where people are stupid. Do they really think that Dell is going to unpackage all of these boxes, load all of these units with Android 2.2, and then box them back up for shipping to customers?

Or... now, here's the wild part. Ship them the way they are, and allow the customers to download the upgrade. Looks as if Dell will be saving an awful lot of time and money by doing it that way. And who knows, some people might like 1.6 over 2.2.

I mean, some people still use Hardy, don't they?

[earthpigg]

You bring up a very valid point, and I am inclined to agree.

One question, though...

Are Android distro upgrades more reliable than Ubuntu/Windows distro upgrades?

[aeiah]

im not too up on android and the differences between versions, but i cant see it mattering too much. how much more functionality can you provide to something like the dell streak anyway? most people will just use it for maps, browsing, email and multimedia i guess.

[Paqman]

The problem with Android tends to be the custom UI layers that the OEMs keep cooking up. There's always a delay between when a new Android version is released (Jan this year for 2.1) and when the OEMs get around to updating their custom UI for the new version.

It looks like Dell found getting the streak ready for 2.1 before launch date a bit of a squeeze, but like you say they can just roll it out OTA when it's ready.

Apparently Google want to try and reduce the OEMs' use of custom UIs, as it's a major contributor to the heinous level of fragmentation on the Android platform.