Dell Mini 3i to be sold by China Mobile and Brazil's Claro

It's now official that China Mobile will start offering the Dell Mini 3i soon and will be the first to do that. As you know Dell will step on the smartphone market, after a several years gap since they've abandoned the PocketPC market.

As you probably know, Dell recently went ahead and made their Mini 3 official after several years ago they abandoned their PocketPC lineup.

The Chinese Dell Mini 3i will sport a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen with 640x360 pixel resolution, 3 megapixel camera, quad-band GSM/EDGE support, GPS, Bluetooth, miniUSB port and microSD card slot. It's nothing impressive, we know.

The Mini 3i will run on the OPhone OS, which in reality is an Android OS customized with a China Mobile specific features such as their own application store.

Unfortunately, the Mini 3i will not have Wi-Fi and 3G support.

There is no official info on availability (both China and worldwide versions) or pricing, but the launch is supposed to take place before the end of the year.

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Dell Mini 3i is the maker's first Android O.S. powered mobile into the cellular phone segment

Another big name in the computer industry is dipping their toes in the mobile phone market - Dell unveiled the Dell Mini 3i at an event on which China Mobile presented their online mobile store.

The spec sheet of the Dell Mini 3i is a bit self-contradicting. First off, it runs the China Mobile developed OMS - Open Mobile System, which is based on Android with TD-SCDMA phones in mind (TD-SCDMA is China's own 3G brew). The Mini 3i isn't 3G capable, just 2G GSM and doesn't count on Wi-Fi or WAPI - Chinese equivalent of Wi-Fi (those Chinese sure like homegrown solutions). Bluetooth is the only local wireless connectivity method.

Live shots of the Dell Mini 3i

China Mobile launched an online store offering media, games and apps, which makes the lack of any sort of fast connection to the Interned a real downer. The store will cater a list of manufacturers including Nokia, Samsung and LG - plus apparently Dell. You can find the store at www.mmarket.com (it didn't work for us but it may be a regional sort of thing).

The screen of the Dell Mini 3i is 3.5" capacitive touchscreen with 360 x 640 pixels resolution. This resolution is a first for Android (OK, technically this isn't pure Android but still).

While the touchscreen nature of the device sets the tone for the design, there's something interesting about the front of the Mini - no keys. Vanilla Android is usable without the keys, but just barely, so the OMS interface will probably be very different - reportedly, it's inspired by the iPhone (rather unsurprisingly). An ambient light sensor adjusts the backlight automatically.

Some more shots of the Dell Mini 3i

The camera on the Mini 3i is a 3-megapixel one with LED flash. There's a microSD card slot for storage. If OMS is anything like Android, it'll have a really tough time doing almost anything without a card so the slot is pretty much a necessity.

A miniUSB port handles PC connectivity but whether it will be able to charge the phone is still not known.

The specs so far read as rather low-end, save for the screen, so the built-in GPS comes as a pleasant surprise, and one of the Mini 3i's saving graces.

It's hard to tell if we'll ever see the Dell Mini 3i outside China, the launch date is not know either. Perhaps it depends on how well it performs, but more likely, it will stay China-only and Dell's next attempts will be the ones that manage to get across the Great Wall (if any).

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