Dell announced Aug. 24th its first smartphone, dubbed Aero. The Dell Aero is now available on the AT&T network. The smartphone, which Dell is calling its first in the United States, runs version 1.6 of Google’s Android mobile operating system. It’s priced at $100 with a two-year AT&T contract, or $300, via the Dell Website without a contract.
The Aero measures 4.8 by 0.46 by 2.28 inches and weighs just 3.67 ounces. By comparison the Apple iPhone (still the gold standard of smartphones) is 4.5 by 0.37 by 2.31 inches and weighs 4.8 ounces. The Aero features a 3.5-inch multitouch display (same size as the iPhone) with pinch-to-zoom functionality and a resolution of 640 by 360 pixels. (Last comparison: the iPhone display, notably, is 960 by 640 pixels, and the Droid 2 come in at is 480 by 854 pixels.)
It appears Dell is aiming to position the Aero in the budget smartphone area. However, in doing so they have fallen short in the area of functionality. It may be behind at the starting gate in the presence of high-end Android phones available today running Android version 2.2. The Dell Aero 624MHz processor won’t keep up with most high-end Android smartphones on the market today having processors running at 1GHz.
The Aero’s 5-megapixel camera doesn’t record HD video like the Droid X or the iPhone 4. It has no secondary camera for video calls, but the GPS chip inside the Aero will geotag your photos.
Dell has included its own user interface on top of Android, and the Aero ships with Quick Office, Facebook, Twitter and a number of Google applications already installed. Facebook and other social-networking apps are additionally accessible with a single tap.
