Dell introduced its first smartphone on Tuesday, named the Aero. It costs $99 with a two-year deal and AT&T requires one of their data plans, as all Android phones do. The Dell Aero falls far short of impressing the masses among the high-end Android phones that exist today for only $100 more.
The Aero is clearly aimed at the low-end smartphone market, which frankly I never understood. If you are going to spend all that money for a data plan, why not spend those extra dollars in the beginning and use a full featured phone. Besides that, there are a few other reasons you avoid the Aero.
The first reason is the mediocre hardware on the Aero. It has a 3.5 inch screen, with a measly resolution of 360 by 640 pixels. This calculates to about 206 pixels per inch, less than the 240 PPI of the large 4.3 inch screen of the Droid X and much less than the 326 PPI of the similarly sized iPhone 4. It has a slow 624 MHz processor, not even two-thirds of the 1 GHz processor most newer Android phones have. Lastly, it can not record HD video. While this is not a deal-breaker, it sure does knock it a notch down.
The second reason is the extremely outdated version of Android that is loaded on the phone. Instead of using Froyo (Android 2.2) or even Eclair (Android 2.1), it uses Cupcake (Android 1.5). Cupcake is lacking on many new features of Eclair and Froyo, such as live wallpapers and voice commands, as well as missing many other updated features.
Many apps in the Android Market require Android 2.1 or above, so users of the Aero will be limited to fewer compatible apps to choose from. Another problem is the heavily customized user interface, so much so that is barely resembles an Android device. Personally I prefer vanilla Android to any of the skins, mainly because I don’t see much of a problem with the user interface and updates come much sooner. The Aero’s skin is so deep that it will take a long time to update to Android 2.1 as Dell promised. After this update, users could be stuck with an old version of Android as we push ahead to Gingerbread and beyond.
The third and last reason is AT&T’s network. There are millions of iPhone users putting a huge strain on their network. There have been more and more complaints about AT&T’s network over the years and many users are sticking to it only because they want an iPhone. Aside from the network issues, AT&T got rid of their unlimited data plans earlier this year. The larger data plan is only 2GB, which is pretty big, though easy to go over. If you plan on doing heavy surfing and streaming from your phone, you will have to keep an eye on a usage meter.
If you are looking for a new smartphone with a wireless carrier, no matter which carrier it is, there are many solid Android alternatives to the Aero. If you are stuck on AT&T I would recommend the Captivate, but avoid the Aero. It is definitely worth it to spend those extra dollars at first and get a phone that is much better. [PC World]
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