Rumor: Dell smartphone coming soon?

It's pretty much inevitable that Dell's going to jump in the smartphone game, and while a couple years back, that would have conjured visions of Axim X5-like monstrosities, Dell's been paying attention to attractive design lately. A Dell smartphone is no longer a concept to make design-minded gadget buyers blanche than blecch.

According to the Wall Street Journal, we might be close to seeing that phone soon. They claim that Dell has had a group of engineers working on a smartphone phones for more than a year (let's hope there's some designers working with them) and that they've built two prototypes: one using Windows Mobile, the other using Android. The two prototypes are also structurally different: one is a slider, the other a touchscreen.

Of course, Dell is always fiddling with prototypes, so this alone implies nothing. But the Wall Street Journal seems confident that the Dell smartphone development team has spent a good chunk of the last year meeting with phone component and software.

So let's see it, Dell: a nice Android smartphone that takes its design cues from the Adamo, not the Inspiron or the Optiplex.

Dell's smartphone [WSJ]

Discussion

Take a look at this

#1 posted by strider_mt2k

, January 30, 2009 5:33 AM

There they go, hatin' on the Optiplex again.

Were you assigned one as part of a court-ordered settlement or something? Sheesh.
;)

I can see Dell testing the waters by releasing info of this type, but I don't know if the time is right for them right now.

#2 posted by dculberson , January 30, 2009 7:56 AM

I finally caved and bought a new laptop a month or so ago. Since the new MacBook didn't appeal to me enough to overcome the price premium, I bought a Latitude E6500; the corporate grade magnesium chassis unit. It's not as solid feeling as a unibody MacBook, but it sure is pretty. I got the blue one since my wife had previously bought the whore red one. (damn you!!)

The design on it is great, IMHO. Thin, light, nice color contrasts, etc. So even if they just use the Latitude as a design guide, their smart phone will be palatable.

My only gripe is that the battery and connector bar is gray while the rest of the laptop is blue and black. Sigh.

#3 posted by Vanguard3000 , January 30, 2009 7:59 AM

This sounds great. The only thing I don't like about my Axim X51v is that I can't talk to people with it.

No matter how hard I try...