Dell Venue Pro: Lightning Strikes
by Vivek Gowri on March 14, 2011 3:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Dell
- Windows Phone 7
- Smartphones
- Venue Pro
- Mobile
Dell Venue Pro - Camera and Video
The Venue Pro has a 5MP camera with an LED flash, similar to many other smartphones on the market. And like so many of its competitors, it’s a pretty decent camera, so long as you have a lot of natural light. Switch to artificial can lighting or night time photography, and your pictures are suddenly an unusable grainy mess.
Daytime shot of an Audi R8
The same R8, this time at night.
Dell shouldn’t take it personally, it’s basically par for the course as far as smartphones go. Unfortunately, next to some of the rest of the WP7 crowd, it’s a bit lacking as far as editing options. You get to change ISO settings, white balance, and four scene modes. That’s about it, which absolutely pales in comparsion to the Samsung Focus’ long list of setting options.
Gallery: Dell Venue Pro Camera Samples
It’s overall not a huge deal though - usually with smartphone cameras, you don’t have too much time to mess with settings anyways. What is a huge deal is the camera button and the lack of a software shutter release. Like the lock button at the top of the device, the camera button is slightly recessed and an absolute pain to press. When you do press it, you invariably end up putting enough of a downward force on the device to unbalance it and give the phone a little shake as it takes a picture. That’s a great recipe for motion blur! I swear, a full two thirds of my pictures ended up resembling photos taken by the elusive Mr. Blurrycam. I started taking batches of 5 or 6 of the same shot to maximize my chances of getting one decent picture, and invariably ended up with no clear, usable images from the entire set. Example, this one of my living room. It's a bit blurry, but that's amazingly the clearest one of the lot. Maybe I just suck at taking pictures on this phone.
A very easy way to eliminate this effect is to just toss a software shutter release button in the camera app, similar to how many Android phones have camera buttons in the hardware and software. It makes sense, but I won’t hold my breath for it - the WP7 requirements list a hardware camera button for a reason. But if you have a steady hand, the Venue Pro is easily capable of web-quality photos, which is about all you can ask from a smartphone camera.
The video camera is decent, good enough for web quality video, but nothing earth shattering. The first-gen Snapdragon processors are limited to capturing either 640x480 at 30fps or 720p at 24fps. No problems with the microphone here, so no repeat of Brian’s issues with the Surround.
Update: Here's the video sample. YouTube compression was basically killing it, so I switched to Vimeo.
AnandTech - Dell Venue Pro Video Sample 2 from Vivek Gowri on Vimeo.
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monty1854 - Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - link
Hi I am from India and I had recently bought the Dell Venue Pro with NO-DO update the problem which is not mentioned in this review is that the 16GB variant has issues of hanging up Freezing and even rebooting this is by far the worst performing phone I have come across. I had mailed this to Michael Dell directly and after which a replacement unit was arranged even that had similar issues i have posted videos of this on youtube.http://www.youtube.com/user/monty1854#p/a/u/1/WvdU... Please post the real reviewcj100570 - Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - link
Although I'm currently firmly entrenched in the Android camp I've historically been a Windows Mobile user and have owned numerous WinMo devices. I've used a WP7 device extensively and I think MS made way too many sacrifices with the platform and has done a lousy job at selling it to the public. The Venue is a very nice phone but ultimately it's doomed to failure because of WP7. Dell should have thrown WebOS or Android onto this fabulous piece of plastic and metal.Crono - Thursday, March 17, 2011 - link
I've named my phone "Lightning" under Zune.Though not entirely original, they really should have kept that name, like they did "Streak" for their tablet.
softdrinkviking - Thursday, March 17, 2011 - link
i think it's a stretch to call WP7 a first effort for microsoft mobile.but i guess it sounds too sarcastic to congratulate them for finally getting it right, huh?
synaesthetic - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
I don't understand this.Smartphone keyboards are hard enough to use landscape. Why voluntarily make them EVEN SMALLER?
SkuLLyRT - Saturday, March 26, 2011 - link
I've had my 16GB DVP for 2 weeks, and it has crashed while downloading/streaming things off WiFi almost every time. I get at least 2-3 crashes a day, easily. From reading the Dell / XDA forums, I'm not alone.You didn't encounter anything like that during your time with the review unit?
crisscross - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - link
How can you do a review of a phone and yet write nothing on the phone's talktime, reception or speakers?tricku2 - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
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