Līve Ambitions

Don’t look now, but Dell is coming back to the smartphone market after a disappointing 2007 for them. On hand to be launched in China in a few days will be the Ophone Mini 3i which is an Open Mobile System, hence the name Ophone. Although there isn’t much concrete information on the Ophone Mini 3i, it is said to be featuring a full touchscreen interface and will most likely run on the Android operating system.

Based on the pictures floating around on the web, it looks like a Palm Pre without the keyboard.  Sorry for the crappy picture – it’s the only one I could find.

It will also have a 640×360 screen display as well as a possible light sensor to automatically adjust the backlight. From what we have gathered, it seems to be a good PDA phone but of course, speculations are a far cry from actually trying it out.

What has gotten people’s attention though is why the Ophone Mini 3i will only launch in China for China Mobile. A common theory is that the Ophone Mini 3i will only operate solely on the China-specific TD-SCDMA 3G band which basically won’t work anywhere else outside of China. But there are also reports that it will be a GSM phone which can be more flexible. Seems weird for a US company to launch a phone in China without first launching it in its own backyard. That’s just plain wrong!

There is a thick cloud of mystery surrounding the Ophone Mini 3i from Dell and only time can tell what it really is capable of. If it’s any consolation, everything mentioned are all speculations and you know how people can make mistakes. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing this phone in the US so we can try it out. Who knows, we might finally have a phone from Dell that we’ll actually like. If you ask me, Dell should change the name of the Ophone Mini 3i to Area 51 because of the secrecy surrounding it.