The Dell (DELL) Streak 5-inch Android phone/tablet has been sorely lacking in the operating system department since its release a few months ago.  Hobbled with last year’s version of Android, the Streak not only has significant competition from the Samsung Galaxy Tab on the high end, and large smartphones like the 4.3-inch EVO 4G and Motorola Droid X, all of which run Google’s latest 2.2 OS (until Gingerbread is released next week).  But there is some good news for Streak owners:

Dell announced via Twitter/Facebook that the Steak would be joining the other high end Smartphones on Froyo later this month.  Interestingly, now almost 80% of the Android devices that access the Android Market are running either Android 2.1 or 2.2 (below).

Android 2.3 should be announced in the next week or so and should run on the Nexus One and another Google (GOOG) device called the Nexus S made by Samsung later this year.  How quickly other manufacturers and carriers update their phones should be interesting to watch.  The Sprint (S)/HTC EVO and the Motorola Droid/Droid 2 were the first carrier phones to get Froyo so my money is on those devices having priority for 2.3.

Since the Nexus S is basically a Samsung Galaxy S phone, one would think that Galaxy S phone would be fast-tracked to Gingerbread.  However Samsung has been extremely slow in upgrading that line, with all US versions are still running 2.1.

But back to Dell.  They’ve waited so long on updating to Froyo, that the news of the release will be drowned out by the excitement around Gingerbread.  Hopefully they’ve got people working overtime on that next release.