The Dell Streak Android tablet will soon be available in the US, and today Dell unveiled the official pricing for the tablet. It will set you back $299 if you sign up for a 2 year service contract with AT&T. If you opt to buy the phone outright, you don’t get the subsidy, which drives the price up to $549.
That might seem like a lot of money, since the Apple iPad starts at just $499. But bear in mind, the $499 iPad doesn’t have a 3G modem and it can’t make phone calls. At $549, the unsubsidized Dell Streak is actually pretty typical for an unsubsidized smartphone.
It’s just $20 more than Google was asking for an unsubsidized Nexus One phone (until it was all-but-discontinued). But the Dell Streak is also about $50 less than the price of an unsubsidized iPhone 4.
Dell has been running a pre-sales event for the past week, and customers who sign up through today will get first crack at pre-order the tablet. If you’re part of the pre-order group, you also get a coupon that lets you pick up a Bluetooth headset for $0.99.
There’s still no official word on when the tablet will actually start shipping.
The Dell Streak has a 5 inch, 800 x 480 pixel display, a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3G capabilities, a 5MP camera, and a MicroSD card slot. At launch, the tablet will run a customized version of Google Android 1.6, but Dell promises to make an update available later this year that will allow the Dell Streak to run Android 2.2 Froyo with support for Adobe Flash.
Update: Dell has removed the blog post about the pricing… but I’d be surprised if the final price is all that different from what we were told in the short-lived blog entry.
via Engadget
What’s the status of Market support on the Streak, Brad?
Unsubsidized, this does illustrate how tough it’s going to be for Android tablets to undercut iPad on price; Apple really is competitive for the specs. The Dell is reasonably priced, too, it’s just that I think people want “reasonable” at about half this. 😉
It’s supposed to come with Android Market access. What I don’t know is
whether Market access is tied to the AT&T contract. It’s *possible* that if
you buy the tablet sans subsidy and don’t sign up for a 3G contract, it
might not work properly. I noticed when I first started using my Nexus One,
for instance, that some paid apps weren’t available in the Android Market
until I activated my T-Mobile plan.
Is it just me, or does the Dell Streak just look like a gigantified BlackBerry Storm?