Dell Venue Pro
A great phone that will get better
This phone is hard to put down. I really, really like it and want to love it but I can't recommend it yet.
The pros: Has a gorgeous 4.1" AMOLED screen. Looking at this screen is such a treat that I found myself browsing through it just to stare into those bright colorful pixels gracefully moving across the screen.
The performance is near liquid smooth. It ran apps, movies and fast scrolling very well and I was impressed with how it held up with daily use.
The keyboard slider mechanism was smooth and worked well. I liked how I could nudge it to wake up the screen to. The keyboard buttons felt plasticky, but they did their job admirably.
The phone felt very solid in the hand and I liked the weight of the device. The speaker is loud enough and well placed on the bottom of the phone similar to the iPhone.
Call quality was good and 3G speeds were also good when I could find reliable 3G coverage.
The cons: Many of the cons are more likely induced by the OS and the carrier than the phone itself but those do detract from the overall experience. The battery life was just OK. It would get through the day with limited use so I turned off many of the background updating to help and it did. T-Mobiles coverage for 3G in my house was spotty so it kept jumping between 3G and Edge which probably helped drain the battery. The phone lacks many of the features that you might expect in current phones which is probably due to Windows Phone 7's lack of hardware support at launch. Right now there are no 4G or hotspot capabilities, no WiFi calling or front facing cameras to be had. The 5 megapixel camera was unimpressive and subject to blurring without stabilization though it did have a flash. The on/off button is very small and was hard to find or press at times.
I experienced frequent issues with either the Application Marketplace crashing or less frequent phone resets. Most of these are known issues and most likely the Microsoft patch due in a few weeks will fix these issues.
