Sunday, May 15, 2011

Price & Specification of Dell Venue Pro

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A second sighting

This is only the second WP7 phone that we’ve reviewed, the HTC HD 7 being the first. The Venue Pro is a large, heavy (192 grams) phone, and feels thicker owing to a concave display. The screen is touted as gorilla glass, but picked up scratches. The top and bottom of the phone are wedge-shaped and with the chrome-rimmed 3.5mm jack adds some style. The bottom slideout QWERTY is about the sexiest form factor ever, and the mechanism s quite slick. The battery cover us glossy, a shame since we loved the matte one on the Dell Venue.

We’re not going to get into the benefits and pitfalls of WP7, for they alone could span several pages, but for normal consumer (as opposed to corporate), the Venue Pro has a few serious limitations – Bluetooth transfers, OS X connectivity to name a couple. We also had issues pairing with a couple of Bluetooth headsets that were on hand. Then there were Venue Pro-specific issues – like our test SIM getting locked without a password or the Internet refusing to work after disabling and re-enabling data connections – an issue that a restart finally resolved. The display is advertised as AMOLED, and while the blackness level is good, and the colours are better than the Dell Venue, we still find the contrast slightly lacking. Sunlight legibility remains poor. The QWERTY keypad is a plus. The touchscreen is very sensitive, and the on-screen keypad works flawlessly. The Venue Pro is a reasonably speedy phone and we faced no slowdowns despite the fact that it runs a some what ageing SoC (Qualcomm QSD8250).

The Venue Pro is a good attempt from Dell, especially given their relatively short time in market with smartphones, and if you’re looking for a WP7 device with a good QWERTY, this is a viable option.