The Streak 7 looks like a giant Streak (the 5-inch version, that is), and that's not necessarily a bad thing considering we've always had a thing for those tapered sides and its fairly rigid, plastic build. Dell's obviously trying to maintain a similar design across all the Streak family members, although it's also brought in some cues from the Venue and Venue Pro relatives -- the rear cover has the same textured diamond pattern as the smartphones. We like how it feels in the hand, but unlike the original Streak, the back doesn't house a removable battery. That actually turns out to be an incredible bummer given what you're about to find out about the battery life farther down in this review.

While many slate makers are moving towards the 10-inch form factor, we're still appreciative of the portability of the 7-inch variety. (Yes, so much so that some of us are even dying for a 7-inch iPad.) Like the Galaxy Tab or Archos 7, the Streak 7 lends itself much better to one-handed use than the iPad or any of the other 10-inch tablets we've tested. We loved being able to comfortably hold the 0.48-inch Streak up when reading a book in bed or wrapping both our hands around the 0.9-pound tablet and being able to use our thumbs to type.

Apart from the three capacitive buttons (back, menu, and home), mic, and camera on the front of the tablet, Dell's kept the design very clean. A plastic latch on the right edge, which can be hard to open if you don't have long nails, hides the SD and SIM card slots. The top of the device has a power button and volume rocker, and the left edge a 3.5mm headphone jack. Disappointingly, there's no HDMI output on the device itself; Dell will offer a separate dock that will attach to the PDMI port on the bottom of the device. A quick word on the PDMI port -- it is the same as the one on the original Streak, and because there's no other USB port on the tablet, you've got to have the cord handy to either charge it or connect it to computer to sideload files. Also, our review unit hasn't been charging via USB -- you have to plug it into the wall via its AC adapter. Yeah, it's pretty annoying.

When powered off, the Streak 7 looks like it has virtually the same display as the Galaxy Tab. Both have highly glossy, 7-inch Gorilla Glass screens that feel incredibly smooth to the touch. However, that all changes when you turn them on. In comparison to the Galaxy's 1024 x 600 resolution display, the Streak's 800 x 480 panel just looks cheap, and the experience is definitely felt when browsing, reading, looking at photos, or watching a high-definition clip. In a side-by-side comparison of the same photo, the Streak 7 just looked low-rate in comparison to the Tab's crisp rendering. Yep, it's pretty much a Pixel Density Enthusiast's nightmare.

Even more noticeable is how much brighter the Galaxy Tab's display is. Hands down, Samsung went with a better quality panel than Dell, and it really makes a huge difference considering, you know, the entire tablet experience is centered around the screen. That quality also translates to mediocre viewing angles -- when held horizontally at about 45 degrees, colors start to fade to black. Vertical viewing is better, although in comparison to the Galaxy Tab's screen, which can be seen at virtually every angle, it's yet again just second rate. Beyond all the actual viewing quality issues, the capacitive screen is extremely responsive, and it, along with the Tegra 2 processor, keeps it responding to our taps and flicks quickly. The accelerometer was equally as snappy, though we wish there was a quicker way to disable it than having to go through the display settings menu.

The software experience is the exact same as that on the original Dell's Streak and Venue -- it consists of the Stage UI, which includes Dell's own full-screen widgets and launcher. The widgets are actually useful -- the Home pulls in the local weather and recently used apps, Social your Twitter or Facebook feed, Web a search bar and thumbnails of your bookmarks, and Gallery locally stored pictures. The good news here is that if they aren't your thing, you can easily delete them and customize the panes with regular Android widgets and apps. The launcher at the bottom provides easy access to the browser, app tray, and mail app. We've been trying to figure out how you can customize the launcher, but we haven't come up with a solution yet.

On the topic of that mail app, it nor any of the other native apps, like the calendar or messaging, have been revamped to take advantage of the extra screen real estate. Unlike Samsung, Dell's done no retooling here to take advantage of the larger screen, though considering the resolution is the same as the Streak, it may have just figured it didn't really need to. If we had to sum up the software package, we'd say that you're really just dealing with an oversized smartphone experience here, and while a few months ago that may have been enough for Android tablet seekers, that's about to change as soon as Google releases Honeycomb in the coming days or weeks.

Beyond promising fast performance, Tegra 2 promises full HD playback, and the Streak 7 certainly confirms that. A 1080p clip of Justin Bieber's Never Say Never played with no stuttering or lag, however, that's obviously pretty pointless considering the lower screen resolution. That aforementioned dock with HDMI-out will be the solution for those looking to take advantage of that HD video. Streaming 720p video on YouTube also worked quite well and general Flash performance was pretty decent -- we were able to get some of the New York Times' Flash videos playing within a few seconds of loading the site. The Streak 7 notched an average of 35 MFLOPS in Linpack -- that's considerably better than the Galaxy Tab's 14 MFLOPS.



T-Mobile offers its usual webConnect broadband plans for the Streak 7: 5GB a month for $50 for new customers and $40 for existing T-Mobile customers. There's also a 200MB plan for $30 a month. There are also prepaid plans which include $10 a week for 100MB, $30 a month for 300MB, and $50 a month for 1GB. As you may have guessed, you can't make phone calls over T-Mobile network with the Streak 7, but you can send text messages.

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HTC will be well familiar with that tag having already rattled off the HD2, EVO 4G, and HD7 in a smartphone-dwarfing 4.3-inch form factor. And while that may not be the largest screen you can have your Android confectionery on today, it's arguably the upper limit of what we might consider a pocketable device. The HTC Desire HD follows, and seeks to improve upon, its laudable predecessors with an aluminum unibody construction, WVGA (800 x 480) display, 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash plus 720p video, and a modern 1GHz CPU. That hardware is put at the service of Android's latest Froyo offering, complemented with an updated Sense that includes a web interface for controlling and discovering your phone remotely. It's a rich spec sheet, that much is unquestionable, but you're not just here for tenuous wildlife-related metaphors, you want to know if the whole is equal to, or perhaps even more than, the sum of its parts. Join us after the break for a deeper look at the Desire HD.

It might in fact be fair to say that the Desire HD may be one of the more resilient flagship devices we've handled this year. That's helped by the understated matte styling, which doesn't look like it'll scratch too easily, and the relatively uncomplicated external design. What little deviations there are from simplicity -- such as the three plastic elements breaking up the plain aluminum back -- are made to accommodate functional elements of the phone rather than to spice up your life with unnecessary flamboyancy. Much like the HD7 we reviewed quite recently, the Desire HD also has very good ergonomics, both in the hand and in the pocket, which really makes you question why you'd ever consider a smartphone with a smaller screen; there's almost no negative to moving to the 4.3-inch size in terms of daily portability.

That is not to say that the Desire HD's design is without its flaws, however. While we appreciate having access to the microSD and SIM card slots, we're not such big fans of their shared cover, which is made of a brittle plastic and fails to sit flush with the aluminum back. Similarly worthy of our disapprobation was the side-mounted battery lid, which has better adherence to the overall curvature of the phone, but is pretty much a nightmare to both open and close. Trust us, we've had our trained lab monkeys going over this, it's a massive pain. Oh, and when you do finally manage to pop it open, the battery compartment offers no retention mechanism for the power cell, which just slides out. Right next to the battery slot is the volume button, and we call it a button because, unlike a rocker, it has almost no travel and it's amazingly hard to differentiate whether you're pressing the top, bottom, or the middle of it. We're actually rather befuddled as to how HTC managed to mess up something so basic and routine in a phone as the volume toggle this badly.

We were also disheartened by a couple of other issues, which are perhaps even more significant than the foregoing. Firstly, as mentioned above, the aluminum casing fails to perfectly align with all the other external elements of the phone it comes into contact with, which is most unpleasantly apparent at the front, where it frames the display. The trouble is that the aluminum sticks out about a millimeter in front of the screen, generating a ridge that your finger flicks against when performing swipes on the phone. What results both feels and sounds like flicking paper at the end of (almost) every screen-transitioning gesture. The problem is apparent on both sides of the display and it's also something we noted in our 7 Mozart review, so it doesn't seem as though we got a uniquely poor Desire HD unit, it's just a failure on HTC's part, whether at the design or manufacturing stage. The second big problem we have here is with the camera on the back, which sticks out from the rest of the body, but is not protected from bumps or scratches in any meaningful way. When laid on its back, the Desire HD rests directly on the lens itself, which anyone serious about photography would both cringe and curse at.

A prime reason as to why that battery runs down so fast is, of course, the inclusion of a jumbo 4.3-inch screen on the Desire HD. We said this with the HD7 and it bears repeating here: although the Desire HD has the same 800 x 480 screen resolution as the original Desire, the simple act of magnifying that resolution onto a larger display just makes operating the phone easier. Basically, you can fit just as much of Engadget on your Desire HD as on the Desire, but the text will be readable at a more zoomed-out level that on the 3.8-inch predecessor. Opinions will differ on this, naturally, as pixel density enthusiasts will decry being able to (or imagining they're able to) spot the bigger dots, but we'll take improved usability and reading room over mildly (if at all) degraded image quality any day of the week.

That sentiment can't be extended to screen technology, however, where the Desire -- whether in AMOLED or Super LCD form -- easily outdoes its HD counterpart. The Desire HD has a decent, but not altogether impressive LCD panel, which we're almost certain is identical to that found inside the HD7. To tell you the truth, unless you're a perfectionist or a purist when it comes to having the very latest screen tech in your device, you won't find yourself disappointed by this phone's display. It gets the job done for the vast majority of the time, though we might have appreciated it if HTC had put a less glossy coating on it -- you know, for the odd occasion when we step out of our underground lairs and into the sun.

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Samsung's plans to unleash a 7-inch Android tablet much like its Galaxy S phones, but it was only after months of painful teasing -- including a cruel look at just its packaging on the Engadget Show -- that Sammy finally unveiled the Galaxy Tab to the world at IFA. The Tab certainly packed the specs -- a 1GHz processor, full Flash support thanks to Android 2.2, dual cameras, support for up to 32GB of storage and WiFi / 3G connectivity -- to put other Android tablets to shame, and our initial hands-on with it only had us yearning for more. Without pricing and availability, however, the story was at a cliffhanger. Of course, those details trickled out over the next few months, and here in the US, Samsung finally announced that all four major US carriers would be getting Tabs to call their own. Verizon then finally took the lead in announcing pricing, and revealed that its Tab would hit contract-free for $600 -- Sprint followed with the same no-contract pricing along with a $400 two-year contract option.

To be honest, our real appreciation for the device's design comes more in terms of its form factor. Unsurprisingly, 7-inch tablets are much better for one-handed use than larger-screened ones (i.e. the 9.7-inch iPad or 11.6-inch ExoPC), and the 7.4 x 4.7-inch Galaxy Tab is no different. Steve Jobs may not think the size is optimal, but we loved being able to wrap our smaller hand around the 0.83-pound / 0.47-inch thick Tab when reading a book or hold it like a phone and use our thumbs to type on the on-screen keyboard. Sure, it's not as light or thin as the 0.53-pound / 0.33-inch Kindle or 0.48-pound / 0.4-inch Dell Streak, but it's still light enough to hold up in bed without fearing that you'll drop it on your face.




The overall build of the device is top-notch, and though it may appear to some like an enlarged Captivate or Fascinate, it feels more solid than those plasticy phones. We're not saying it's a rugged device by any standard -- although it does have a Corning Gorilla Glass screen -- but it does feel incredibly durable, and we didn't worry too much when it mistakenly fell off the couch. By the way, the Tab's smooth back causes it to slide off things every so often -- so we'd suggest keeping this little guy in a case or nabbing a stand for it. We do wish the Tab had a built-in kickstand like the Evo 4G and Archos 7. Think about it, Samsung.

Indeed, it's been quite a long journey, but even after all of that, some of the major questions are still left unanswered. Does the Tab provide a more complete and polished experience than all the other Android tablets out there? How are Samsung's specially tailored apps? And ultimately, has a tablet finally hit the market that can rival Apple's iPad? We think it's about time we answer those questions and finally open what might be the most important chapter of the Galaxy Tab story.

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