Dell confirms hobbled Android mobile launch for China

So Dell has confirmed that its long-awaited smartphone launch will take place in China and Brazil by the end of the year. As we have come to expect from Dell, the announcement contains so little information that it almost wasn’t worth making. But we can piece together a lot of info from what has come before - and honestly, it doesn’t look all the great.

The Mini 3i is an Android based smartphone. While the current release contains almost no details on the phone specs or pricing, there are some things we can confirm.

The weirdest of which is that the Chinese version of the device is 2G.

The Mini 3i that will be launched in China is running Ophone - the version of Android that China Mobile uses. As you might have guessed, that means it’s launching with China Mobile. Now, there are some problems with this model. Despite the fact that this device should be a smartphone, it comes with neither 3G nor WiFi support. So the only data services you can use will be over 2G, which is slow as hell.

If China Mobile has learned anything from the disastrous iPhone launch, it should be that people don’t like spending money on crippled devices. So hopefully it’ll be selling the Mini 3i at incredibly low prices.

The Brazilian version is called the 3iX, and will not be hobbled in the same way - it’s got both 3G and WiFi. And this is the same version of the device that Dell has confirmed will be launching in the US sometime during 2010.

For more details about the Mini 3i, check out our report from August.

What we think?

I don’t know about Dell anymore. I was initially pretty excited when rumours surfaced it might be getting into the mobile space, and even more so when the Android speculation started. But since then there has been nothing but a string of disappointingly information-light press releases and crippled phones. We’ll see.