Undeterred by having carriers flat out reject their too-Dell-like Android smartphone, Dell is apparently still pushing ahead with another project based on Google's operating system. The WSJ reports they've been developing a "pocket-sized device for tapping into the Internet," describing it as slightly larger than the iPod touch. The plan for the device, using an ARM chip instead of Dell's typical x86-based choices from Intel or AMD, is to either start selling it later this year... or scrap it entirely. How's that for vague?

BoingBoing Gadgets has a good teardown of WSJ's use of the Intel's marketing term MID, or Mobile Internet Device, to describe Dell's Android endeavor here, considering the thing isn't even supposed to contain an Intel chip. Curiously the story also claims Dell is considering selling this device through mobile carriers, despite offering no telephony capabilities. They claim this is plausible because cell providers are starting to subsidize netbooks on the market now; however, why bother building in 3G to a device the size of a cellphone, subsidizing it and tying it to a data plan, and then not bother to give it phone capabilities as well? 

It just seems like Dell (along with Sony, Samsung and Fujitsu before them with the long litany of MIDs and UMPCs) are chasing this mythical market of people with really big pockets who are dying to carry around two different slabs of circuits with an LCD screen. Perhaps they should focus their marketing efforts on folks who like to wear cargo pants... assuming this device ever sees daylight outside of Dell's underground pocket protector-infested engineering bunker.

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