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 - Performance and Battery Life
Windows Phone 7 devices have set specifications, with the 1GHz Snapdragon QSD8250/8650 (for CDMA models) being the only SoC supported at present. The 8250 is part of the first generation of Snapdragon processors, built on a 65nm manufacturing process and with Qualcomm’s Adreno 200 GPU onboard. It’s a pretty old processor, so hopefully the next wave of devices will give us a better range of newer Snapdragon or Cortex A9-based processors to choose from (we’ve heard that driver issues are limiting it to the 1st-gen Snapdragon chips right now). The Venue Pro is no different from the rest of the WP7 crowd, with the QSD8250, 512MB of memory, and 8-16GB of flash built in.
An interesting note about the RAM is that the phone only displays 256MB of memory, if you use the Marketplace app called “SystemInfo”. However, Dell clarified that there is actually 512MB of memory, but some of it was used by the operating system prior to being made available to applications, causing the app to report the amount of RAM incorrectly. Either way, the Venue Pro performs like every other Windows Phone 7 device, both in real world usage and in our browser benchmarks, so it’s not too big of a deal. These benchmarks just demonstrate how much Microsoft needs to improve the JS performance in IE9 Mobile to be competitive with Apple and Google.
Battery life is a mixed bag, pretty mediocre overall. It’s better than the Focus, but both the Focus and the Venue Pro lag behind the Surround and Optimus 7 by a ways due to the AMOLED screens. As Anand explained in his review of the Focus and Optimus 7, the amount of white pixels in our web-browsing test tend to hurt AMOLED displays significantly more than LCDs, which is why the Venue Pro comes off so poorly in the battery test. If you use the darker WP7 theme, the phone actually lasts longer than you’d expect given the showing in the battery tests.
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VivekGowri - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Yeah, sorry about that. I had to rush the pics, so they got taken in non-ideal lighting conditions and such. They'll be improved next time around though.strikeback03 - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link
At least the R8 V10 is a much more interesting subject than the usual smiley mugVivekGowri - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
I live right next to an Audi dealership, so my camera samples usually end up being of new Audis. Last time I think it was a 2011 A8, before that a TT or something. I try to keep it interesting :)earle36 - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
When this phone came out, it was THE phone I wanted to get. Love the form factor, love WP7. I went to the Microsoft store and played with it a bunch, and decided this was the phone I was going to get. Then, I started hearing about issues with the device. Camera issues (mentioned in the review), device crashes, blue tooth issues, wifi issues, engineering battery sample shipping with the device, SIM card failing, replacement devices completely failing, and so on. In fact there was a thread detailing the issues on the dell support site:http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/mobile...
Some of the points are very picky, and the list has grown quite a bit over time, but there were really some serious issues. Dell has been incredibly slow to respond, but they did respond. What remains on that issues list is mostly "nice to haves", but I thought it was worth mentioning.... Also, a lot of people had terrible luck with the customer support...vague responses about timelines for replacements, fixes for the issues, and so on.
Thought it was worth mentioning.
BaronMatrix - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Have no fear. I have ZERO problems. I use the 4G and not WiFi but call quality is great with the included headphones and email is VERY FAST. I needed to get my personal email off of work PCs and this does the job PERFECTLY.The KB lets me type long emails easily with ZERO errors.
Wizzdo - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
"I have ZERO problems"Can you explain in more depth the issues you are having with ZERO?
BaronMatrix - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
It keeps looking like an O.Faruk88 - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
Would have been nice to see a section on the phone's reception capabilities, like in other recent phone reviews on anandtech!TareX - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
An AMOLED screen that dim would be virtually unusable outdoors.bplewis24 - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link
While I still can't stand the UI look and could never purchase a WP7 phone on that basis alone, I love the hardware look of this phone.Brandon