Two Dell rumors are making the rounds: a phone and tablet

Two rumors are making the way around the blog sphere both centering around Dell.

After today's announcement of the deal struck with BestBuy, Dell isn't sitting on their laurels of being in the news.

First up is the report that the new Dell Tablet will be going on up for order on Tuesday, December 11th. The new tablet has been highly anticipated on all the Tablet PC sites with even Big Daddy Engadget seemingly interested in the story:

Oh, your holiday shopping budget just took a turn for the worse, dinnit? We've gotten a slew of reports from sources all agreeing that Dell intends to launch its forthcoming Latitude XT tablet PC on the 11th (next Tuesday).

Rob Bushway at GottaBeMobile.com snagged the PDF manual and went through a lengthy post on what to look for:

• There are two types of display options for the 12.1" WXGA (1280 x 768 ) display: LCD backlit ( 220 nits ) or CCFL Dual-bulb LCD ( 400 nits ) for outdoor viewing
  • The CCFL Dual-bulb option comes with an ambient light sensor
• 1 gb of RAM on-board, max of 3 gb of ram
• support for 34-mm and 54-mm express cards via express card slot
• SD card support
• definitely multi-mode support through capacitive touch and active digitizer
• Dell likes to refer to the Tablet PC as a "Tablet-PC" - with the hyphen
• The WWAN antenna extends out the back, or whip's out, as Dell describes it

Not sure about the veracity of that statement since all reports are from tipsters who don't ordinarily provide tips but Tuesday is not that far away so we can all afford to be a little patient on this one.

The last I heard from a little bird who was supposed to be testing the tablet, Dell informed him that there are some issues that have delayed the testing phase.

The second is the "Dellphone" running on Brighthand.com:

A report by Forbes adds new fuel to the possibility that Dell intends to enter the smartphone market in the near future with a device manufactured by Quanta.

Near the end of an article discussing Dell's business strategy for recovering from recent business losses, reference is made to a possible upcoming Dell smartphone project:

Dell and Quanta are rumored to be cooking up a smart phone together, the first real production from [Former Motorola Mobile Devices division head] Ron Garriques and company. It would likely include video, an MP3 player, and Internet access, and be unleashed on the world early next year. Officially, there's no comment on this product.

I like the name "Dell Phone" but not sure Apple will like it. Besides, as Adama on Brighthand points out, there have been numerous rumors of a Dell phone since the Dell Axim days and none have come to market let alone a prototype.

I'll file the Dell Phone rumor under probably a long wait-and-see.