Bottom Line The Dell Venue is a powerful Android phone with a smooth UI, but there's little to distinguish it from the competition.
Dell has a troubled history with portable consumer electronics. Over the years, the company has dipped in and out of various markets, including portable MP3 players, PDAs and now phones. The Dell Venue cell phone is a keyboardless, Android-powered version of the Venue Pro, which runs Windows Phone 7. Sadly, there's little to distinguish the Venue from devices made by more established handset firms, and without an AT&T or T-Mobile subsidy, it costs much more up-front than competing products.
Design and Call Quality
The Dell Venue measures 4.8 by 2.5 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs a hefty 5.8 ounces. It's made mostly of plastic, with thick chrome accent bands on the sides, a soft touch bumper on top, and a textured plastic back panel. I'm not sure why it's so heavy. The 4.1-inch, 480-by-800-pixel, Gorilla Glass AMOLED capacitive touch screen looked good, if not quite as sharp, next to the Super AMOLED screen of a Samsung Galaxy S 4G ($199, 4 stars) I had on hand. But the Venue's screen is slightly curved, and not as nice to touch as the one on the Galaxy S. There are only three function keys at the bottom; the usual Search key on Android phones is MIA. Typing on the Venue's on-screen QWERTY Swype keypad was easy given the large screen. Dialing numbers was also simple. Dell snazzed up the dial and connect screens without slowing them down, which was a plus.
The Dell Venue I tested was set up for AT&T; it's a quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and tri-band HSDPA 7.2 (850/1900/2100 MHz) device. Dell also sells a separate version optimized for T-Mobile, with that carrier's 3G band. There's also 802.11b/g Wi-Fi; it connected to my WPA2-encrypted network without issue. You can also use the Venue as a mobile 3G hotspot for up to five devices with the appropriate AT&T data plan. The Venue doesn't support 4G HSPA+ networks, but it does support high-speed HSUPA uploads, which the "4G" Motorola Atrix ($199, 4 stars) and HTC Inspire 4G ($199, 4 stars) don't. I got 2.4Mbps down and 914Kbps up with the Ookla speed test app, which is good for an HSPA 7.2 phone.
Voice quality was about average. There was plenty of gain in the earpiece, and voices sounded bright, albeit a bit computery sounding. I also heard some static, even though I live in an area with solid AT&T coverage. Callers on the other end said I sounded as good as I do on other AT&T handsets. Calls sounded okay, albeit with some background static, through an Aliph Jawbone Icon Bluetooth headset ($99, 4 stars). Voice dialing worked well over Bluetooth. The speakerphone sounded okay but didn't go loud enough to use outside. The 1400mAh battery lasted a solid 6 hours and 23 minutes of talk time.
Specifications
- Service Provider
- AT&T
- Operating System
- Android OS
- Screen Size
- 4.1 inches
- Screen Details
- 480-by-800-pixel, 16.7M color TFT LCD capacitive touch screen
- Camera
- Yes
- Network
- GSM, UMTS
- Bands
- 850, 900, 1800, 1900, 2100
- High-Speed Data
- GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA
- Processor Speed
- 1 GHz
OS, Dell Stage, and Apps
The Dell Venue runs Android 2.2, also known as Froyo. Dell has customized the OS rather heavily with what it calls Stage, a series of card-like widgets that give you home screen access to frequently used apps. It lets you swipe between photos, videos, social networking, music, and Web sites without diving into the menu system. The widgets aren't particularly customizable, though, and there's no landscape mode on any of the home screen panels. Dell's deft programming kept the UI moving at a good clip. That said, there were a few glitches in our test unit. Dell Launcher crashed with a force quit dialog, just from scrolling between the home screens. While Stage ran well for the most part, menus scroll choppily left to right. I had trouble adding my Gmail account; the buttons were stuck on one of the screens, with no way to advance (a reboot cured this problem). The charging indicator never worked correctly, at times racing from 20 percent to 98 percent and another time generating a "taking too long to charge" error overnight.
Otherwise, this is a standard issue, higher-end Android phone. The 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250 processor with its 512MB RAM performs well, though it's an older part. The WebKit browser is responsive and fast, and supports Adobe Flash 10.1. The Venue also syncs Webmail and Microsoft Exchange e-mail, contacts, and calendars, while Android Market gives you access to over 200,000 third-party apps. You also get Google's free voice-enabled, turn-by-turn GPS navigation.
Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
This is a good phone for multimedia. The standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack is welcome. Remove the battery cover, and you can replace the MicroSD memory card. Dell includes a 16GB card, and my 32GB SanDisk card worked fine. There's also 465MB of free internal memory. Music tracks sounded clear and full over Motorola S9-HD Bluetooth headphones ($129, 3.5 stars), although I heard some buzz in the background. The fully stock music player was responsive and displayed large album art thumbnails. Dell's VideoStage movie store is expensive, sluggish, and largely useless. Standalone MP4 and 3GP videos played smoothly in full screen mode; 720p files also played back smoothly and looked sharp.
The 8-megapixel auto-focus camera includes an LED flash. There's no front-facing camera, which isn't a big loss since we've yet to see a smooth video chat on an Android device. Test photos looked okay overall, with reasonable detail both indoors and out, vibrant color, and good light balance, but with a significant whitish tint to the proceedings. Shutter speeds were on the low side; I lost a few shots to motion blur, and the auto-focus took two seconds to lock in on each shot. Recorded 1280-by-720-pixel HD videos looked pixelated in lower light areas, but played reasonably smoothly at 20 frames per second. You can do some basic photo editing and cropping on the device, and then share them on Facebook or Flickr.Dell is facing an uphill battle with the Venue. There's little to distinguish this phone from its competitors. Dell's Stage UI is interesting, but needs further development work. Dell doesn't incite the same kind of brand loyalty across devices that Apple and Sony do. Even if AT&T or T-Mobile pick up this phone, I'd still recommend an HTC Inspire 4G on AT&T, or a T-Mobile myTouch 4G ($199, 4.5 stars) or Samsung Galaxy S 4G on that carrier. And without a carrier subsidy, I expect Dell to sell very few Venues at its $499 list price. It's a nice phone, but there's not much reason to bother.
Benchmarks
Continuous talk time: 6 hours 23 minutes
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