Dell Lightning deals & review

Well, they do say lightning doesn’t strike twice – and in the case of the Dell Lightning this is true. Although there are four other handsets launched together with the Lightning – Thunder, Flash, Smoke and Aero – the Lightning is the only slider phone and only non-Android phone.

Run on the Windows Phone 7 OS, the Lightning sports a 4.1 AMOLED capacitive screen like the Thunder, but also a slide-down QWERTY keyboard. The phone looks fantastic. It is sleek, compact and powerful. And the technology behind the screen should ensure the display is as good, with support for 16million colours and multi-touch for finger-pinching zoom ability.

Internally there is power too thanks to the Qualcomm 1GHz Snapdragon processor and 512MB RAM. This will likely mean you can open apps freely and without the problem of slowing as you switch between and use the various features. There is also full flash support so watching web videos will be possible.

Although the Lightning is a high-end device like the Thunder, the camera is 5-megapixels rather than 8-megapixels. There are features like autofocus and face detection so taking photos on this phone should be fine, and there is a video option also. Although unconfirmed at this stage, it’s likely the Lightning will have social networking ability and you’ll be able to upload images and videos directly to sites like Facebook, and possibly have all your communication streamed onto the home screen for instant notification and response.

Other features we know of are a music player and FM radio, and GPS.