Is it a Phone? Is it a Tablet? 5” Dell Streak on sale Friday 8/13/10; Preorders on 8/12/10

After months of anticipation, it’s here –– the new 5” Dell Streak. According to Ben Patterson, technology writer for Yahoo! News, the Android-powered Streak mini-tablet/smartphone - discussion abounds as to which it really is - you can decide for yourslef - goes on sale Friday, August 13, 2010 in the U.S. through AT&T – with pre-orders on Thursday, August 12. Pricing comes with the normal song-and-dance - $300 with a two-year contract; $550 with no commitment.

The 1Ghz Snapdragon-powered Streak come with 2GB of internal storage and microSD memory expansion, WiFi, Bluetooth, a GSM Radio for voice calls. It has a 5-megapixel camera and a duel-LED flash in back plus a front-facing VGA camera for video calls.

A major disappointment with the release of the Streak is that, while Dell initially promised it would be delivered with the latest Android technology, the new Streak is being released with version 1.6 which lacks multi-touch support and other key features.

However, Dell promises that the Streak will be releasing an over-the-air update to version 2.2, complete with Flash 10.1 support, later this year.

If you’re thinking of investing in the iPad or Streak, you can compare it to Android-powered smartphones in the market. Plus, you may have more options in the near future.

Patterson says that other new devices are on the horizon: the Samsung 7” Tab in a month, Motorola and Verizon are developing Android tablets, and the HP Zeen is getting a lot of attention as well. Plus Dell has 7” and 10” Streaks it should be releasing soon.

So, you may want to wait and check out a few of the other soon-to-be released devices before you get into a long-term contract. Either way, the smart phone/mini-tablet market is getting very interesting!