Wireless News

Dell has been threatening to launch its own smartphone for a while now. The company was unable to get any interest in a Dell smartphone drummed up by carriers in the U.S. so it headed to China where the handset has now officially debuted after weeks of blurry images leaking.

The official specs for the device are that it runs Android and is a 2G GSM device only. Talk about a big bag of suck, it even lacks Wi-Fi. Other features include a 3.2MP camera, Bluetooth, a 3.5-inch screen, and a microSD card slot.

The battery for the phone is a 950mAh unit that should be decent enough with no 3G offered. I can see now why no carrier in America wanted the handset.

New and extra blurry pics of the Dell Android-powered smartphone have surfaced online today. While the pics are extra blurry, the device is powered up and we have multiple angles to view. The phone has the codename Benzine and is supposedly ready to hit the market.

The specs include a 3.5-inch 640 x 360 18-bit LCD, 3MP camera, USB 2.0, Bluetooth, AGPS, touchscreen support, on screen QWERTY keyboard, and a microSD card slot. The phone doesn’t sound that bad, even if it’s a bit pedestrian. Perhaps that’s why no U.S. carriers bit when Dell shopped it around.

Rumors that Dell is poised to leap into the cellphone market and oust all rivals with a clutch of low-cost smartphones for the everyman come up pretty regularly; however, while analysts and “industry sources” say one thing, Dell always maintains it has no plans to add mobiles to its range.  At the company’s analyst meeting today Alex Grunzen, senior VP of Dell’s consumer product group, refused to comment on the ongoing speculation, only going so far as to confirm that Dell’s work with mobile wireless carriers in their PC business had “created enormous opportunities”.

“At the end of the day, we are about connecting customers, whether it’s at their business or their home” Alex Grunzen, senior VP of Dell consumer product group

According to Grunzen, Dell has ”room to be a bit more experimental” with products after a number of unspecified obstacles had been cleared from their consumer business.

You could almost use the rumors that Dell are planning to return to the smartphone business to tell the time, so regular does the story resurface. After suggestion from Marketing Week back in January that the company was considering partnering wiYth Google to produce an Android-powered handset, DigiTimes are now crediting “market sources” in Taiwan for the news that Dell are intending to release Windows Mobile-based smartphones. With manufacturing, apparently, by Foxconn Electronics, the partnership would be the culmination of restructuring at Dell since it hired ex-Motorola exec Ron Garriques in early 2007.

Supposedly ASUS’ acquisition of E-Ten Information Systems has spurred Dell on to fast-track its programme; Foxconn have also started to recruit mobile device expertise from other handset manufacturers in preparation for the Dell orders. Devices are rumored to include GPS PDAs and smartphones.

Dell and Foxconn are yet to comment.

There’s a reason phones don’t remotely resemble PC cases, and we think this mockup does a fabulous job demonstrating why that is. We’re totally cool with Dell and Alienware producing an Alienware-branded handset — especially if it runs Android, a platform Dell has been rumored to be very, very interested in — we just really don’t want this (or anything like this) to be it. The morphing keypad and user interface look awesome, but we have a very simple rule when we purchase a new phone: under no circumstances should the slider have physically painful ridges digging into your hands during use.