Dell Streak from O2 running Anroid 1.6 - Software

When I first received the phone it was running Android 1.6 which seemed a little odd baring in mind most other Android phones at that time were running versions 2+. As this was my first experience of Android it didn't bother me too much as I was unaware of anything that I was missing out on!

The phone was easy to setup. My first task was to sync it up with my Outlook contacts and calendar etc. With Nokia you use PC Suite, with Dell you use their version called... Dell PC Suite.. once that was done it became clear that I had 2 of certain contacts.. after a while I realised that the phone had downloaded my Gmail contacts at the same time as I'd setup my Gmail account. It had also synced up my calendar. My habit meant that I wanted to sync with my laptop using the Dell PC Suite however over time I shifted over to using the wireless sync option, syncing directly with Google rather than with Outlook on my laptop. Consequently I've found myself using Googles calendar and contacts far more often that Outlooks. Although using Googles Calendar Sync on your PC doesn't make it feel like you're completely separating from Outlook. the only down side is your phones and your laptops contacts can end up becoming separated.

Pictured above is the 'home screen'. If you press the 'home' button you are immediately returned to this page. You have up to 6 pages (including home) in which you can house icons, pictures, wigdets, rss feeds etc etc. I separated mine into 'uses' i.e car, music, news and weather, football etc. The Android market has a significant number of apps available for instant download. They're either free or quite cheap (most expensive one I've gone for is the National Rail app which is fantastic if you commute and that was £4.99). The apps that cost anything can be paid for by using your Google Checkout account.

In 1.6 if you press the tab displaying 'O2-UK' a menu is displayed showing all your pages (left), simply press a page/tab and the screen rotates left or right to that page.

The 'start' button is situated at the top left hand corner, press this and a short list is displayed showing your most recent apps, press a second down arrow and the rest of the apps are displayed.

Included with the phone is Googles Beta version Navigation program. I've been really impressed with it so far. Again it links up with your contacts list and lets you create short cuts for journeys on one of your home pages. i.e you can setup an icon on one of your home screens with a destination on it, then all you have to do is touch that icon and the navigation program starts up and immediately plots a route to that location. Again a simple idea that works really well. So far it doesn't seem possible to add your own POI's which is something I'd gotten used to with TomTom. I haven't found any Google add ons that warn you of speed cameras, although there are 3rd party programs available. The voice for the navigation is a little... special? TomTom's is quite inoffensive whereas this thing makes it feel like you're driving around with Stephanie Hawkins.

You can switch on Googles traffic layer whilst driving which gives you regularly updated traffic news and displays it via colours on the map i.e a section of the M4 in red means heavy traffic. The M25 is generally coloured black!

The navigation search links straight into Googles websearch.. which is pretty darned clever. It doesn't rely on POI's to tell it where the local Tesco's is.. it lets the internet do it for it!

All this web based navigation is great for as long as you have a signal. I can see this being almost useless in certain areas of Cornwall. Next time I head down there I'll let you know how I get on!