Dell Venue Pro

On January 13, 2011, in Dell Venue, by
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The Dell Venue Pro is a new entry onto the market for the computer giant trying to make it in the mobile device field. It’s one of Dell’s first phones to use Microsoft Phone 7 and is clearly aimed at the business market. That’s a brave move considering the other players in that market. Credit is due to Dell for ambition if nothing else.

The phone is dominated by the 4.1-inch 800 x 480 AMOLED screen. It uses Gorilla Glass, like other Dell phones, and is a very clear and bright experience. The screen size makes the phone a little bulky, but it’s a small price to pay for not having to squint quite so much when reading emails.

The other unique selling point of the Dell Venue Pro is the sliding QWERTY keyboard at the bottom. It slides down vertically, which makes this phone quite long. It still sits comfortably in the hand, but the length is considerable.

The keys are small, but surprisingly usable. Think Blackberry Torch, and you have the idea. The slide action is silky smooth, almost asking you to try it out. The keys are rounded, and tight, just how we like them. The keyboard will appease many business owners who find other keyboards fiddly. This one is easy to use, intuitive and won’t break fingers while using it. Answering work emails has never been easier on a phone.

Like other Dell phones such as the Streak, the body of it has three buttons on the front. This time they are back, start, and search. Volume controls and a 3.5mm headphone socket are on the side. The back sports a carbon fiber looking design and a 5-megapixel camera complete with LED flash. It also allows for the best exchange email hosting.

Inside, you get a 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM. That’s plenty enough hardware to run the Windows Phone 7 OS. Operation of the phone is smooth and fast. The menu system seems intuitive and ready to work. While we have yet to see a retail version of this phone, the demo looked really good. The official blurb from Dell says it all really.

“We see the Venue Pro for everyday people with a diverse range of full and busy lives”, says Dell. “They need to stay connected, be productive and keep in touch with colleagues, friends and family. Dell designed the Venue Pro to be a multi-purpose always-connected device to help people be more efficient, always connected and entertained”.

Dell are after Blackberry, they said as much last year. If they can convince current users of the Curve to try the Venue Pro instead of the Torch, they might be onto something. From the mutterings online, Blackberry users would be happier going Windows than Google.

As a business oriented phone, the Dell Venue Pro looks a solid contender. It lacks a front-facing camera for video conferencing, and is bulky enough to spoil the lines of a good suit jacket, but apart from that looks to be a good mobile device.

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Dell Venue Pro Enterprise Phone Delayed, Some Past Christmas

On December 22, 2010, in Dell Venue, by
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Dell is the latest phone maker to stumble as it hurries to meet user demand—a happy problem, the glass-half-full folks might say, but a bummer for those hoping for a Dell Venue Pro under the Christmas tree.

Responding to media reports of shipment delays—such as Matt Miller writing at ZDNet that the posted delivery date for his Venue Pro has been pushed to Jan. 6—Lionel Menchaca blogged at Direct2Dell that while, yes, some orders won’t arrive until Jan. 6-ish, Dell also has plans to begin delivering the phones Dec. 17 and throughout the following week, leading up to Christmas.

“Dell is ramping production as fast as we can,” wrote Menchaca. “We’re continuing to monitor our manufacturing and supplies and will make every effort to align shipments with arrival expectations. At this point, our most important focus is to deliver the right out-of-box experience so customers are happy with their purchase.”

The latter line is reminiscent of Nokia’s Dec. 14 statement that it is delaying shipment of its E7 smartphone “to ensure the best possible user experience.” For both companies, a spotlight on shipping delays is preferable to a device with operational problems (as Nokia can likely attest), and it seems both are taking care to get things right. While the E7 was supposed to ship in December, it’s now scheduled for “early 2011,” with the timing expected to vary between markets.

Shipping times for the Venue Pro will also vary, said Menchaca, by the time and date that orders were placed. He added, “We expect all back orders to be delivered shortly.”

Designed for business users, the Dell Venue Pro runs Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 and a 1GHz processor, comes with Office Mobile preloaded and features a 4.1-inch WVGA AMOLED capacitive touch display and a four-row QWERTY keypad. Out of the office, users can sync it to the Xbox Live. A 5-megapixel camera is also on board, along with support for email, MMS and SMS, as well as Internet Explorer Mobile, Bing Search and Maps.

New to the smartphone market, Dell recently set its sights on the enterprise phone space and announced that it will not only transition its 25,000 employees from RIM BlackBerry smartphones to Dell smartphones (the Venue Pro is a good bet), but it’s setting up a business helping other companies do the same.

“Clearly, in this decision we are competing with RIM, because we’re kicking them out,” Dell CFO Brian Gladden said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

dell_venue_android_0Dell is also expected to launch a Microsoft-based tablet in early 2011. Citing unnamed sources, The New York Times reported Dec. 14 that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will likely take the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show in January with a number of new tablets, including units from Dell and Samsung.

Dell currently offers a tablet running Google’s Android operating system, the Streak. With an unusual 5-inch screen size, however, its reception has been muted, with early reviewers calling it too big to be a smartphone and too small for a tablet. The more common screen size is 7 inches, which Dell has in the works—though Apple CEO Steve Jobs has mocked even that size, calling it too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad. (On the diagonal, the Apple iPad’s display measures 9.7 inches.)

“These are among the reasons that the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA, dead on arrival,” Jobs said during Apple’s most recent earnings call.

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Dell Will Replace Venue Pro’s With Battery and Wi-Fi Issues

On November 15, 2010, in Dell Venue, by
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A release from Dell said the company will replace Venue Pro handsets that have either the mislabeled battery or Wi-Fi issues with their new Dell phone. A post on the Direct2Dell blog said both issues stem from manufacturing dell-venue-proerrors.

The battery issue doesn’t affect the quality of the unit or the battery, the release said. It was merely a mislabeling issue. The post said that the factory that produced the batteries has simply put the wrong label, so they carry the message “engineering sample.”

Dell insists the batteries are production units and stand by their quality. However, they have also offered the opportunity to Venue Pro owners with such a battery to exchange it at a Microsoft store. They are keen to stress that the batteries are retail quality, and will server their intended life as normal, and that the move is merely to reassure customers and provide good customer care. These replacements will be available at the end of next week, according to Dell.

There is also news of poor Wi-Fi performance of Dell phones, specifically the Venue Pro, the company has announced a plan to replace those that are having problems. While certainly not the only phone to have connection issues, Dell has to have credit for coming right out and saying it instead of telling customers they are holding the phone wrong!

In this particular case, users have complained of poor Wi-Fi connections in certain situations. Dell say they have engineers working on the problem and may have identified a software issues that is causing the poor performance.

Several blogs reported users with issues with their Wi-Fi and Dell seemed to have got onto the case right away. A further update to their blog reports their engineers identified a software glitch that slipped through QA and into manufacturing. This affects the first Venue Pro Dell phones, and not those produced later.

Those who have the early phone, and who are experiencing this issue are encouraged to go to a Microsoft store for a replacement new phone. Dell assures that the new phones don’t share the same problem.

To quote Dell directly:

“We have addressed and corrected the oversight and are working with our partners at Microsoft to replace Venue Pro units to ensure people are 100% satisfied with their purchase.”

No new model is ever problem free at launch, look at other high profile devices that have had similar issues. Credit to Dell for acknowledging the issue and getting onto it straight away. Other manufacturers would do well to learn from this and not treat customers as fools. Dell wins much kudos for holding their hands up and tackling the issue head on.

*UPDATE* According to the company, the Wi-Fi issue only relates to Dell phones bought on November 8 or 9. This must have been the initial batch rushed to retail. Phones bought after that should be fine.

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Dell Venue Pro Hands On

On November 12, 2010, in Dell Venue, News, Reviews, by
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The Venue Pro is the new Dell phone that uses Windows 7, and is coming to a store near you. It has had a lot of media coverage over the past week or so as it’s Dell’s new flagship phone. Despite that, it actually seems to be quite good. Considering the state of the previous Dell Aero and the Android phone they produced for AT&T, it’s going to have to be.

The Venue Pro smacks of being primarily a phone for business users. It’s solid, weighty and has a reassuring bulk about it that hints at longevity. It has a raised area on the back, and tough, scratch resistant glass on for the screen. It’s the same material Dell uses on the Streak, so we know it works quite well.

The Venue Pro just feels more like a corporate mobile than a sleek, shiny consumer unit. There isn’t anything in there especially for businesses users, not as far as we could see, but much like the Blackberry, even though consumers can still use them, they lack the appeal of the iPhone or others.

That said, the new Dell phone packs quite a punch, whoever uses it. There’s a large 4.1” screen, which is ideal for the Windows 7 interface. While the screen size does make the phone a little bulky, it’s much easier to see what’s going on, and to use the applications effectively. It’s a little larger than an HTC or LG Optimus, but not so much that it becomes unwieldy.

The phone comes with a QWERTY keyboard, with rounded raised buttons. Even pudgy fingers like mine could tap out a text message in a few seconds, and had no problem navigation my way round. Dell phones are relatively new, so we don’t know how hardy these guys are, but the solid construction gives us a feeling of confidence. Let’s just hope the electronics are up to the job.

The Venue Pro is a slider phone, which keeps the orientation vertical, which neatly circumvents the Windows 7 screen issue where it prefers portrait mode to landscape.

Hardware wise, it has a 1-GHz Qualcomm QSD8250 processor, a 5-megapixel camera, and 16GB of storage. This seems pretty standard for Windows phones right now, and so far has been more than capable of running the OS and applications.

With the phone comes some Dell phone goodies, such as a year’s subscription to Pageonce Personal Finance. If you get it through T-Mobile you also get Netflix, T-Mobile TV, Slacker, Telenav and other apps. To get the phone through T-Mobile you’re going to have to order direct from Dell, as these aren’t going retail. No T-Mobile store will have these in stock, so it’s mail order only I’m afraid.

From our brief test, the Venue Pro looks like a significant step forward for Dell phones. It’s slick, quick, and seems perfectly capable of handling anything you can throw at it.

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Dell buoys Windows Phone 7 as it drops BlackBerry

On November 11, 2010, in Dell Venue, News, by
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win7-dell-venueRIM suffered a massive blow as one of the world’s biggest computer manufacturers, Dell, has just shifted 25,000 of its employees off BlackBerry phones over to Dell handsets sporting the new Windows Phone 7 mobile OS platform.

Venue Pro over BlackBerry

Dell will shift 25,000 employees – about one quarter of the people it employs – onto its own Venue Pro handset powered by Windows Phone 7, and expects the move will slash the company’s mobile communications costs by 25 per cent. Not only is this good from a cost-savings perspective, it will also give Dell staffers some insight on their own products’ strengths and shortcomings since they will be eating their own ‘dog food’, so to speak.

As for those 25,000 used BlackBerry’s? Dell CFO Brian Gladden says that: ‘We actually had a conversation last night around creating a site on eBay where we can actually sell these BlackBerry devices.’ Ouch.

Cracking at the seams or just strategy?

This is definitely a major blow for BlackBerry to lose that many customers at once, particularly in such a high profile organisation, but it may also just be a strategic play to boost Dell’s smartphone ambitions. In this respect, it may be premature to say RIM is losing its touch with its core customer base – the enterprise space – but this does not bode well for the company.

Major Phone 7 boost

Furthermore this is a massive boost for the Windows Phone 7 mobile OS platform. Sure, 25,000 subscribers is a mere drop in the ocean when compared to the tens of millions of Android handsets shipping and the 14 million iPhones shipped in this last quarter, but it’s that particular customer base that matters. Having that many concentrated users sharing professional networks could be a massive seed and a catalyst for growth in the enterprise space.

And for Microsoft and the Windows Phone 7 mobile OS platform, any growth potential is good, especially with the all-out assault Apple and Google have launched.

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Dell Venue Pro Passes FCC test, Ready For Windows

On November 2, 2010, in Dell Venue, by
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The Dell Venue Pro, a T-Mobile supported Windows 7 Phone with 1700MHz 3G support has passed FCC approval and is on it’s way to T-Mobile in time for the holiday buying season.

The device, model name V02S features Windows Phone 7, a portrait slider and a full QWERTY keyboard that slides out from underneath the phones screen. That screen is a 4.1-inch capacitive touchscreen that runs on a 1GHz processor.

As Unwired Review points out, that’s about all the juicy details we’ll be getting from the FCC at this time.

The Dell Venue Pro is rumored fora  November 8th release, the same time AT&T Wireless will be launching their own Windows 7 Phone.

source

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