The Dell Aero has arrived and reports are mixed at best. This Android based smartphone comes with a 3.5 inch screen, 2GB of storage, a 5MP camera, and a microSD slot. It is also one of the lightest smartphones currently on the market – so just what seems to be wrong?
Overall, Dell seem to have done OK with the hardware side of things, even though the processor is a paltry 624MHz in contast to the 1GHz chips used by much of its competition. Where they have failed miserably however, is with the software, with a version of Android that is almost a year and a half out of date. What makes this decision particularly lame is that Google actually give the latest version of Android away for free. Maybe the guys at Dell didn’t get the memo.
That’s right – the Dell Aero runs on Android 1.5, which was released back in April 2009 and has undergone four major upgrades since that time. What that means for the Dell Aero is simple – every single improvement to Android in terms of additional features, user interface, and speed is nulled, leaving a phone that never really had a fighting chance.
To be fair, Dell have made an attempt to keep the Aero up-to-date with the addition of some of their own software tools, such as a handwriting recognition application, and a ‘Flash Lite-enhanced’ version of the Android browser. While these few additions are quite cool, it is nothing compared to the huge amount of third-party applications that simply wont run on this very old version of Android.
Many Android apps require Android 2.0 to run, and some of the newest tools ever need Android 2.2 before they will work. The snazzy 5MP camera with 8x zoom and on-board GPS are not going to help you in any way when you can’t even access these apps, and in my opinion – if the software’s not right, the hardware might as well be broken.
If you are keen for a 15 month old version of Android with a new hardware spec, the Dell Aero is selling for the not particularly cheap price of US$99.99 on an AT&T contract, with other contracts also available.
Specifications
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
3.5 inch screen
640 x 360 resolution
Multi-touch display
5MP camera with 8x zoom
Multi-task GPS
WiFi through AT&T
Bluetooth
2GB on-board
32GB through Micro SD
