How to recalibrate your Dell Streak’s touchscreen

Posted on February 21st, 2011 webmaster 15 comments          Print

A few days ago I was trying to unlock the screen on my Dell Streak and I was having a hard time dragging the lock icon, it wouldn’t go all the way through and not responding well.  I thought my Dell Streak was busy at first, maybe a process was using up a lot of resources in the background, but when I was finally able to drag it all the way and at the screen where to type in the password, I noticed that some sections of the touchscreen weren’t responding to my touch.  I figured I probably need to recalibrate.

A quick Google search led me to this post: http://www.streaksmart.com/2010/10/how-to-calibrate-dell-streak-touchscreen.html

I’m just gonna repost it here so I can just search my website next time I need to do this :

1. Power off your Dell Streak.
2. While holding both Volume Up and Volume Down buttons, press the Power button.  This will take you to the recovery mode screen.
3. Press the Volume Down button a couple of times to highlight option 3, Screen calibration, then press the Camera button to select it.
4. You will be prompted Are you sure you want to start calibration? Press the Volume Up button, then press the Volume Up button again on the next screen to start the calibration.  The screen will shut off temporarily, don’t touch the screen.
5. After a few seconds, you should see a message that it’s done, then press Volume Up again to start the calibration data check.  Screen will shut off temporarily again, don’t touch the screen.
6. After a few seconds, you should see another message message that it’s fully done and you’ll be brought back to the menu screen. You can then either power off your device and power it back on the normal way or just don’t do anything and wait for the device to reboot itself.

The screen calibration made a big difference, my Dell Streak now feels a lot more responsive .

Note: I tried this on my Dell Streak running Android 2.2 Froyo, I’m assuming it’s the same for Android 1.6 since the calibration happens before the OS loads.

How to upgrade your AT&T locked Dell Streak (Baseband GAUSB1A111231 Build 6601) to Android 2.2 Froyo

Posted on January 23rd, 2011 webmaster 64 comments          Print

I’ve been patiently waiting for Dell to release the 2.2 version of the Android OS for my AT&T locked Dell Streak but they just keep pushing it back and there’s currently no specific release date.  They’ve already released it for the non-AT&T locked versions but it seems like AT&T is preventing them from releasing it to the AT&T-locked ones.  The Dell update package seems to check the baseband version of the device so even if you were able to get an unlock code from AT&T the update won’t work unless you have the specific baseband version that the package was created for.

I was reading the Dell forums and there are a lot of people who are pretty upset about this too.  So a lot of them decided just to do it themselves and were able to upgrade their Streaks to 2.2 by using the QDLTool and following this guide from streakdroid.com.  It was actually very easy to do and I wish I had done this months ago!

The QDLTool will change your baseband version to GAUSB1A130500 which is the unlocked version.  The QDLTool will also install the pre-release version of 2.2, so you may want to upgrade to the official release after that (which should now work since the baseband version of the device has changed, you can download the official release here: http://mobileupdate.dell.com/PackageProductionLocations/Streak_318_12821_00.pkg)

Here are the steps I took, note that I ran the QDLTool on a Windows XP Pro 32-bit machine.  Use this guide if you have a 64-bit Windows: http://streakdroid.com/?page_id=87.
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How to unlock your Dell Streak for free

Posted on December 13th, 2010 webmaster 10 comments          Print

If you’ve searched around for “Dell Streak unlock” you’ve probably seen results to unlock it using a Rebel Simcard or some ridiculously priced unlock service where you give them your IMEI number and they’ll give you the unlock code within 24 hours after paying.

Luckily, I stumbled upon this post before I did any of that which told stories of customers who were able to get unlock codes for their Streaks by simply calling AT&T and asking for the unlock code.  I gave this a try tonight and it worked!

Here’s what I did:

1. Called AT&T support at 1-800-331-0500.
2. Customer service rep asked me for my wireless phone number and told her I’m not an AT&T customer and I recently purchased a Dell Streak but it was locked to AT&T and Dell support told me that only AT&T has access to the unlock codes (this is pretty much what you’ll get from Dell support, or they might just tell you to buy the “newer” truly unlocked Dell Streak that they just released last month).  I also told her that I have my IMEI number ready.
3. The lady on phone has never heard of the Dell Streak before and she wasn’t sure how to get the unlock code for it, but she was very nice and really wanted to help me so she put me on hold while she asked around and look for a way to do it.
4. About 5 minutes later she got back on the phone with no luck but she told me she’s still working on it and will stick around until I get what I need .
5. After about 20 minutes or so she finally found it!  She gave me an 8-digit unlock code and I asked her if she could stay on the line while I try it and she said no problem.  I put in a SIM card that I got in the Philippines and when I booted my Dell Streak it said “Network Locked,” so I entered the unlock code and it worked! I don’t get a signal with that SIM though so I couldn’t see the carrier information, but I rebooted again and this time no more prompts to unlock it so it looks like it definitely worked.  I also got prompted by the system to re-login to my Google account.

This may involve some luck, though, as not everyone will be as nice and helpful as the person I got so just keep trying and eventually you’ll get someone that will actually help you .

I’m still waiting for my Froyo 2.2 update, however, as it seems that they’ve only released it for Dell Streaks with baseband version that ends with 00.  Hopefully the wait is not much longer.  It’s unfortunate that Dell made such a great product but the support is just awful.

Well, at least for now I can finally get rid of my TracFone and get another prepaid service from another carrier (TracFone’s SIM only works on TrackFone phones, it showed “Invalid SIM” on my Dell Streak).