A far prettier version of this article now exists at the new Times website.

First impressions of the Dell Streak, the company’s 5-inch Android tablet, are almost entirely favourable.

First of all, it’s thin, and small enough to slip easily into an inside pocket. Secondly, it runs Google’s Android operating system, so its controls are intuitive, and instantly familiar to anyone who’s ever played with an HTC phone.

But the big surprise is the screen. At only five inches, it’s around half the size of that of an iPad, and 1.5 inches bigger than an iPhone screen, yet the difference in watchability is remarkable, perhaps because of the screen’s 16:9 ratio. TV programmes and even feature films feel like less of a compromise than on a smartphone.

Unlike the iPad, the Streak can be used to make telephone calls, and it also has a nifty 5-megapixel camera built in.

It’s such a complete device that it leaves only one question lingering in the mind: who’s it aimed at?

“Mobility is really important for us,” Paul-Henri Ferrand, Dell’s Chief Marketing Officer, told The Times. “If you look at what’s happening right now in the world - the big trends - you’ve got broadband, 3G moving to 4G, an explosion of data. In the next three years we need to make sure we keep up.

“We believe that there is definitely a usage for an iPad form factor, but also between the phone and the iPad there is also a usage for the Streak.

“Most phones today are designed for calls first, data second. What we have found is that people are using a lot more data than voice. We think the Streak will be the first machine of its kind. Where the whole usage is driven by data first, and then the phone.”

Dell looks like being the first major manufacturer to market with a touch-screen tablet since Apple lit a fire under the sector with the launch of the iPad earlier this year. Google is known to be working on a tablet running its Android system, and similar devices are expected from the likes of HTC and HP, an indicator of how this new market segment blurs the boundaries between telecoms and computing.

The Dell Streak will launch in June exclusively with O2, which is preparing a special data tariff for the device, though has not yet announced its prices. Further versions of the Streak, with 7- and 10-inch screens, will follow the launch of the 5-inch device.