Hands on: Dell Thunder

No, not in our hands but in the lucky hands of the people at Engadget, who are bagging all the scoops of late.

From the pictures we can definitely see that the Dell Thunder is a decidedly unique looking piece of Android hardware. Put it in amongst a slew of Android lookalikes, and you’ll definitely be able to pick out the Dell Thunder in an instant.

The dudes at Engadget are saying it looks sleek and all but we’re not buying it. It does look different, but we’re not a fan of the chrome sides, and the design of the three navigation soft buttons as the bottom looks rather dated in our opinion. But as always, we’ll reserved final judgement when we get a unit of our own to play with.

Specs wise, nothing has changed from the earlier leaks. There’s an 8MP autofocus camera with a single LED flash and 4x digital zoom and 720p video recording. The Thunder is purported to have a 4.1in OLED with 800×480 resolution. Engadget reviewed two units with one running 800×480 and the other had an impressive 1280×768. Both, they claim, are running standard LCDs NOT OLEDs. Considering that this are pre-pro units, we’re going to say that none of the resolutions are confirmed, so the final production Thunder might be running 800×480 or 1280×768 or something in between.

Powering the Thunder is a 1GHz Snapdragon QSM8250 CPU with Qualcomm Adreno graphics similar to the one powering the Nexus One. There’s no custom skin atop the Android 2.0 that’s running on one of the pre-pro units while the unit is running Android 1.6, also naked.

There are other goodies that showed up in the Thunder’s bootloader and debug software that is not included in the pre-pro units reviewed by Engadget. Things like HDMI-out, dual-mic and an FM radio tuner. If these will indeed make it to the final production unit, the Dell Thunder looks to be a strong contender.

For full details on the Dell Thunder hands-on, head on over to Endgadget.