OK, so Dell is making another foray into the smartphone market with the Aero. Sure it's cute, light, and relatively compact, but just like any new kid to the neighborhood, it's going to struggle to keep up with the kids who already know the terrain. It doesn't help matters that the new kid is also sporting last year's haircut (i.e., Android 1.5).
Still, perhaps Dell can afford to carry its smartphone ventures on its computer-selling back while the company figures out how to keep up with the curve.
As mentioned, the Dell Aero is light (weighing just 3.67 ounces) and that's what Dell is trying to center its pitch on, as that's the first thing mentioned on its official site. Now, Dell claims that the device "lets you do what you want, where you want, at amazingly fast speeds." Sure, nobody likes a heavy phone, but when was the last time you saw someone so weighed down by his mobile that he was rendered immobile? Was it Zack Morris on Saved by the Bell with his early '90s era mobile phone?
Nonetheless, the Aero is slim at just 0.46 inches thick and 4.8 inches tall and 2.28 inches wide. The body sports a nice-looking, polished-graphite finish. The 3.5-inch, 640 x 360 pixel resolution touchscreen features a Gorilla glass surface and has multigesture and finger-based handwriting capabilities. You'll only be viewing one homescreen on the Aero, but at least it's customizable.
The Dell Aero also comes with a pretty robust eight-megapixel camera with several photo-editing tools. This means you can clean up your pics before you upload embarrassingly shoddy photos from your phone. You can also geotag them thanks to the onboard GPS.
The Aero comes with Flash Lite, meaning you can view videos and Flash movies and Flash-based sites. Having Flash on your phone is pretty standard now, even with the looming HTML5 (is it looming?).
Of course there's also Bluetooth, Outlook Exchange, 3G, Wi-Fi, a music player, and Android Market apps, all of which can be run at the same time thanks to the 624Mhz Marvell processor.
Undressing the Dell Aero
The Dell Aero does a lot of things right, but it's still behind the curve. Dell really has to step up its game if it wants to stay on the field.
The Aero comes with 2GB of onboard memory via a microSD card, and that's unreadable to 32GB.
I don't see why anybody would buy this phone when many of the free phones offered by carriers (at least if you're due for an upgrade) are just as good or better. If, however, you're still interested in the Dell Aero, you can have it for $99.99 with a two-year plan with AT&T or you can splurge and get it for $299.99 with no contract; the choice is yours.
