The next tablet I’m going to take a look at is The Dell Mini 5 (I’ve already looked at the JooJoo and the HP Slate). Not much is known about the Dell Mini 5 yet aside from that is has a 5 inch multi-touch screen, runs a customized version of the Android OS, and uses a 1 GHZ Snap Dragon Processor. The Dell Mini 5 also doubles as a phone and supports wifi and bluetooth. The plus side of this is that the Android OS supports a lot of apps that can only be rivaled with the iPhone/Pad/Touch OS. In fact, Chris wrote a posting on the best Android apps for photography. But does that do anything for us photographers?
My honest answer is no, not really. I mean the Android OS has a lot of potential right now and a lot of very useful apps have been made for use on Android compatible devices but to be used as a tool for the photographer on the go does not seem feasible. Â I think its pretty neat that the device doubles as a phone, but it is just too small to do much of any editing with. If you refer back to my post about the iPad and Blind Photographers you’ll see that I make note of the iPad’s screen size being prime for blind photographers and also for editing, this goes the same for the HP Slate. The Dell Mini 5 I feel has a lot of potential but not for photographers where the ability to edit photos, and for some, screen size is the name of the game.
Lets consider an idea though. Lets say we were able to fully edit our photos on what is essentially a giant phone (The Dell Mini 5 apparently is not pocketable). Lets say we can edit all the way from the RAW format that most of us shoot in all the way down to the final product. It would be weird, and possibly more time consuming. The weird part comes from the size of the screen.  You want to be able to zoom in on certain parts of your image and edit it and a small screen would possibly make this impossible.  The time consuming part is that now you have more sub menus to deal with because you can only fit so much data and icons on a 5 inch screen. The last part is those that don’t have the best eye sight. As someone that needs contacts or eye glasses to see on a daily basis looking at a smaller screen for a lengthy amount of time just gives me a headache. I’m not sure how other Blind Photographers would feel, but thats just me. So therefore from a personal opinion stand point I would certainly not recommend it.
That’s it for the Dell Mini 5. Â Only two tablets to go which are the Archos 9 and the Industry Shattering(maybe) Apple iPad. Â I’ll look at the Archos tomorrow and save the (potentially) best for last on Friday.
