Dell Venue Pro Review
Dell has constantly outlined excellent computing solutions which embed the latest technologies and features and made its ‘true’ presence felt in the mobile segment with the launch of its Dell Venue and Venue Pro phones. The former is powered by the Android operating system while the latter offers a wonderful Windows Phone 7 experience. The Microsoft Windows Phone 7 operating system fits together basal content from the web, applications and services into a single layout for pristine navigation. Infusing new and refined elements, Microsoft ingeniously perked up the entire smartphone arena to devise new imperious mobile devices, making Android’s growing line-up to stop and think for a while. This time, we got the Dell Venue Pro smartphone on our desks for a comprehensive run through. Here we scribble down our entire odyssey in our review.
On opening the box, we spotted a microUSB cable and a wall charger along with the Venue Pro 8GB handset. The Dell Venue Pro is certainly lightweight and caught our attention with its attractive appearance. It houses a 4.1-inch diagonal running display which is incredible and offers images with immense clarity. Moving on, three capacitive touch-sensitive buttons namely Back, Menu and Search are precisely positioned on the bottom of the screen while the top offers adequate space for a speaker.
These touch-sensitive buttons get illuminated when the handset is switched on and provide smooth tactile feedback. The screen looks magnificent and the QWERTY is neatly integrated without making the handset look bulky. The Venue Pro moves one step ahead by offering a vertical slide-out QWERTY keypad. We could easily glide the keypad without any interruption as its 121mm x 64.4mm x 14.9mm dimensions slipped into our pocket. The company could have slightly trimmed down the edges. Nevertheless, weighing 192 grams, it can be conveniently carried along.
The appearance is furnished with a metallic silver rim whch precisely runs through the smooth rounded side edges. The upper and lower edges sport a rubberized texture for advanced ergonomics and grips. The right side comes along with a volume rocker and a dedicated camera button. The upper edge integrates a 3.5mm audio jack and a power/sleep/awake button while the lower edge houses the speakers and charging port. The backflip feels plasticky and supplements the style factor with a patterned design and comes entrenched with the Dell logo and Windows Phone letterings.
The flipside also accommodates a 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash. The screen is incredible and feels sturdy with the curvy Gorilla glass display which promises to confront abrupt drops or bumps. The screen gets marked down for leaving enough room for unpleasant fingerprints. Moving on, the earpiece and proximity sensor are fixed above the screen. Savoring the refreshed Windows Phone 7 interface, we did not mind cleaning the screen every time to get rid of the nasty fingerprints. The interface completely caught our attention as we could conveniently pin applications or icons. The top arrow on the screen intuitively takes you to the menu that comprises a wide array of icons. Needless to say, swiping our fingers across the screen was smooth and we did not face any major issue.
The Dell Venue Pro handset sports a gamut of color options forming its theme while the ‘People’ option will allow you to add accounts like Google, Outlook and more. Reducing clutter, the menu comes with independent icons for functions like Alarm, Calculator and Calendar. The Settings option puts forth sets of applications and system in which you can effortlessly change the functions. The Menu includes Messaging, Office, maps, IE, Games and Camera while Music and Videos are placed under one icon. The spec sheet also highlights 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 512MB RAM and 1024MB ROM.
Ever since the Dell Venue Pro smartphone reached our desk, we were mesmerized with the screen and stylish appearance. Moving on, we analyzed the integrated screen to shed some light on its functionality. The 4.1-inch WVGA AMOLED capacitive, multi-touch display screen offers 480 x 800 pixel resolution for crisp, sharp and highly detailed images. We could easily glide our fingers on the touchscreen but disappointingly the screen froze during our multi-tasking sessions. Using the handset under sunlight was certainly seamless as we could clearly view the text and images without straining our eyes.
Next, we opened YouTube pages to check some popular videos and were amazed with the audio quality as the sound did not distort even at high volume levels. Not to forget, video playback was smooth and did not put forth unnecessary tantrums while functioning. Unlike its reception, the call quality was mediocre. You cannot answer a call simply by sliding the keypad upwards. We feel the calling experience could have been further elevated. Searching for an external card slot can be futile as this smartphone can be picked up only in two versions mainly 8GB and 16GB.
Syncing the device with our PC requires the Zune software and we must say it was a lengthy and tedious task. After loading the Venue Pro with our music collection, videos and images, we yearned to see the common drop and drag feature. Keeping up with its name Venue ‘Pro’ which stands for Professional, the handset comes loaded with the Office Hub that merges Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote to lower redundant clutter while managing files and documents. However, we were perplexed as Dell missed out the copy/paste feature. Connecting to Wi-Fi was seamless and pages loaded precisely without any time lag. The page orientation changes intuitively from portrait to landscape or vice versa, all credit to the highly efficient accelerometer.
Further, creating a Windows Live account should be easy. The pre-loaded MarketPlace offers a perfect blend of interesting applications, games, music and more. We tried downloading few games and apps and the experience was smooth. The games can be accessed via Xbox Live and apps can be directly spotted on Menu pages. Equipped with a rechargeable 1400mAh battery, this Dell handset works proficiently for one and a half day on a single charge.
To round it up, the Dell Venue Pro smartphone left us with distinctive positive impressions. With its elliptical, slender form factor, the handset is designed elegantly with a vertical slide-out QWERTY keypad. It lacks copy/paste and Flash support but is a good smartphone considering its impressive Windows Phone 7 operating system and stainless steel edges along with Gorilla Glass display screen. Price tagged at Rs. 34,990, the Venue Pro is certainly worth a try. The handset manages to get a good rating of 8 out of 10 from us.
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