Mar 25, 2011 01:34 PM
5130 Views
Dell Venue is in my opinion one of visually most appealing phones in the smartphone category. It looks better than iPhone4 of course in my opinion.
I bought this phone in India, and in my US visit most of my office mates kept on asking about this phone as Dell Venue is not launched in US.
I will not list all the specs here as they are available on the net elsewhere. But the features that matter are the 1 gig processor, android froyo , 8mp camera, gorilla glass display.
The display quality is superb. The 800X400 amoled screen gives vivid and brilliant images.
Voice quality and signal detection capacity are at par with any other phones in this class. There is nothing phenomenal about Dell venue here, but it can match any phone in this category.
The response of the phone is very fast. Before I bought this phone, I was vacillating between HTC Windows phone, Dell Venue pro and Dell venue. I decided to go the android route as almost half of the world is doing. I am happy that I did. I do not have a comparative analysis of the applications available now on the windows 7 platform, but Android marketplace is capable of smothering you with the sheer numbers. More important many great applications are free.
There was also another reason why I had reservations about the windows phone. My last phone was SE X1. I was happy with the phone till I experienced the android smartphones. They are incredibly fast. I am sure Windows 7 phones would be comparable but I did not want to experiment with an unproven OS, even though in the PC world I am a microsoft fan.
HTC screens appear dull and jaded when compared to Dell venue and also Samsung Galaxy. Actually Samsung Galaxy is a good phone in the sense that it has similar vivid screen, is lighter than Dell Venue and has FM radio, which Dell Venue does not have.
Dell venue also does not have secondary camera.
There are 6 home screens that you can configure with the stuff that you do regularly. Connecting to internet and setting up of email account went like a breeze. There are not millions of set-up screen but all you need to do to configure the phone to your liking is available. You can tether the phone to use it as a modem for the PC. Transferring files from and to PC is a cakewalk.
The 8MP camera is a marvel. The pictures are really something unless I start comparing the results with a 30000-40000 SLR. But when this phone around you really don;t need a camera at least for capturing the routine moments.
In order to download applications from the Android marketplace, you need a gmail account and surprisingly I could not use my existing account. I had to open a new one.
The videos are crisp and the sound quality is good, but not great. The headphones are also enough for using the phone for business needs. This phone is not clearly designed for the media users who want to use the phone primarily for listening to music.
With a 4" screen one can not really expect the battery to last forever. By the evening the fully charged phone starts wilting down in terms of battery availability, but so does any phone with a large display. The gorilla glass is supposed to be scratch proof, but it would be better to call it scratch resistant. The glass is definitely superior to peers in its class.
In spite of its size it can be mostly operated with one hand. The on screen keyboard in the portrait mode is not for banana fingers. But in the landscape mode it is can accomodate bananas too. But the voice recognition software and the swype features are excellent. Now a days I use the voice recognition to type in sms and emails.
As expected opening office documents attachments is seamless experience. In fact you have to really invest very little to make this phone meet all your business needs out of box.
I broke the glass by accidently dropping the phone from a height of about a meter. To my surprise, the service was extremely prompt. The dealer directed me to a service agent, who took the snap of the broken glass, mailed it to New Delhi head office. They sent the estimate in 2 days. I paid the demand draft and get hold of your chairs. They took my broken phone back and gave me a fresh piece. Now it is quite possible that they gave me a refurbished phone. But who does this in todays world? I was pleasantly shocked by this wonderful aftersales service.
In summary if you are looking for a professional phone with good looks and durability, and excellent after sales service, you don't need to look elsewhere.
