Mobile Phone News

$130 for the newest member of AT&T’s Android family? Funk that noise! Dell — yes, the same Dell that will be offering its own Android phones on AT&T in the near future — is selling the just-released Aria for free when activated on a new line with a two-year contract. Of course, it’s a time-honored tradition for third-party wireless retailers to undercut carriers’ own subsidized prices, so it’s no big surprise that this is inexpensive than $130 — but for it to drop all the way down to $0 the same week of release is a pretty sweet deal. Too bad the lack of app sideloading is less of a sweet deal… but we digress.

You’d like to think that any Android device launching these days would come equipped with an absolute bare minimum of Eclair, but that’s not the case; Dell’s Streak, for example, will be coming out of the gate with Android 1.6 — and seemingly so will LG’s LU2300 Optimus Q. We were just handed this rather engaging attention spec sheet that says the phone’s loaded with 1.6 on no uncertain terms, a stark change from LG’s official (and someone unhelpful) line that it may or may not launch with 2.1. At the very least, we’d hope that an upgrade is in the works — but hey, at least it comes with LG’s trick Air Sync service, which is a pretty sweet deal.

Sure, we’ve already seen Android pop up on the HP 2133 Mini-Note thanks to some intrepid DIYers, but at this time comes word from The Wall Street Journal that HP’s got programmers looking into using the Google OS officially for an upcoming netbook. VP of the PC division Satjiv Chahil’s quoted as saying they’re in the process of assessing its capabilities, so don’t get your hopes up anytime soon. Also mentioned is Asus, which we already knew about from back in February. Interestingly, the report states that Dell’s been tweaking the software for use in multiple devices due out this year, including a MID and one of those long-rumored smartphones — that is, assuming they make one that can tickle the carrier’s fancy.