The price of Windows Phone devices has recently been dropping, firstly the HTC HD7, then the LG Optimus 7 and then the other week the Dell Venue Pro. I decided to get a Dell Venue Pro and here is a quick review of the device.
Hardware
The Dell Venue Pro is quite a chunky device, mainly down to its hardware keyboard and large screen. Apart from that it pretty much fits into the standard Windows Phone template, ie six buttons, 3.5mm headphone socket, micro usb, camera and a flash. It also has two speakers on the bottom of the device as well. The keyboard is a portrait keyboard like the Blackberry Torch. It has a nice solid feel to the slide, unlike some recent hardware keyboards; looking at you HTC Desire z! The hardware inside the Dell Venue Pro is standard Windows Phone parts as well. It does feel fast though, whether this is down to the current lack of multi-tasking or something “special” Dell have done I’m not sure. The screen is Amoled as well so colours seem a lot deeper than on my other devices. It came with 8gb of memory which I plan to increase to 16gb soon (warranty voiding I know). Below are a few pictures around the phone showing you the various elements of the phone.
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Software
Windows Phone 7 is pretty much the same regardless of device, there are no fancy battery eating skins sat over the top. So I will not bore you with details of each and every app that comes with it. The Dell Venue Pro currently runs the NoDo update and is waiting for the Mango update. Over the last few weeks a lot of people have been getting excited about the Mango update and Dell have announced that the Venue Pro will receive the update soon. This should make the Venue Pro an awesome device. Microsoft have posted a few videos about the Mango update and I have posted these in another article here. At the moment the only thing I am struggling with is the lack of a decent Twitter app, for Android I use Tweetdark and Plume but for Windows Phone the best I have found is Rowi which is good but leaves me wanting to dig out my Desire z and fire up Tweetdeck. The Mango update is meant to have much better Twitter integration so hopefully things will improve.
So overall I really like the Dell Venue Pro. I have always been a fan of hardware keyboards and this one is slightly different to others but still useful. Coming to Windows Phone from Android has been a little difficult as I had certain apps in mind that I wanted to find for Windows Phone. But the Xbox integration, the Zune software for my pc, the various hubs gathering media and the neat and straightforward layout of the Metro ui have won me over. If you fancy a Dell Venue Pro I would keep your eyes on Expansys as they seem to be clearing these out.
Interesting idea for a qwerty. It enables the phone to have a decent screen but also be portrait. Personally I dislike landscape keyboards on phones but Blackberry style means the screen is tiny.
HTC and/or Samsung please bring this to Android but with a decent processor (1Ghz at least). All qwerty Android phones have cut down processors. I’d buy it for sure. I too am a big fan of hardware keyboards. They’re so much quicker for typing than touch screen.
Just FYI, every Windows Phone has a processor speed of 1GHz or higher (minimum spec)