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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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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