Dell Venue Pro
Encyclopedia
The Dell Venue Pro, codename Lightning, is a mobile smartphone running the Windows Phone
operating system. The phone uses the T-Mobile
network, but is only available for purchase at Microsoft
retail stores or directly from Dell Corporation
.
The launch of the phone suffered multiple setbacks, due to many technical and logistics issues, with poor communication between Dell and its customers.
Despite being cited as a launch partner for Windows Phone headsets early in July, the phone was not widely on sale in the United States on the launch day, unlike phones from other launch partners, such as Samsung Focus
and three other phones by HTC
.
On October 11, in an official statement, Dell announced the phone to be available in the U.S. in holiday season of 2010. On November 8, Windows Phone was launched, and a very limited quantity of the phone was available for purchase only in the 7 Microsoft stores in the U.S. However, some early adopters of the phone received defective phones with Wi-Fi issues, SIM card issues, faulty headphone jack, and batteries marked as "Engineering Sample". Despite Dell urged users to return the phones, no phones were available in stock for exchange, and phones were not reshipped on November 19 as claimed.
After missing both the States-wide launch on November 8 and the online launch on November 15, Dell announced that they were "ramping up production" and intended to launch the phone in a bigger scale.
On December 1, Dell reintroduced the phone and began taking orders. Customers were given a shipping date of December 15. However, a day before the estimated shipping date, customers were informed that the shipping date was pushed until January 6, 2011, two months after its intended launch date, as the phones "were being reworked in the factories". This caused user uproar in many Windows Phone communities.
On December 16, Dell issued a new notice to assure that orders received before December 14 would be shipped before Christmas with overnight shipping upgrade and a free gift. However, the Estimated Delivery Date of the orders were not updated until a couple days later, causing confusion amongst anticipating customers. Several customers ordered on a later date received phones before those who ordered earlier. The promised shipping upgrade was also not fulfilled for many customers.
On February 3, 2011, Dell launched Venue Pro in India. The launch price of Dell Venue is Rs. 34,990.
On September 23, 2011, Dell posted that the Dell Venue Pro will get mango "later this fall" on the unlocked, Cincinnati Bell, and T-Mobile devices. The AT&T model, dell said "forthcoming".
networks. Dell urged users with buggy phones to return them to the place of purchase and receive replacement handsets. In addition, even after the full launch of the Venue Pro, there have been reports of WiFi crashing the phone while downloading or using the data connection in some way.
With the update codename "NoDo", the Venue Pro correctly report its RAM count as 512MB.
Windows Phone
Windows Phone is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft, and is the successor to its Windows Mobile platform, although incompatible with it. Unlike its predecessor, it is primarily aimed at the consumer market rather than the enterprise market...
operating system. The phone uses the T-Mobile
T-Mobile
T-Mobile International AG is a German-based holding company for Deutsche Telekom AG's various mobile communications subsidiaries outside Germany. Based in Bonn, Germany, its subsidiaries operate GSM and UMTS-based cellular networks in Europe, the United States, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands...
network, but is only available for purchase at Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
retail stores or directly from Dell Corporation
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
.
The launch of the phone suffered multiple setbacks, due to many technical and logistics issues, with poor communication between Dell and its customers.
Launch
The phone was codenamed 'Lightning', and was leaked to the Internet on April 21, 2010.Despite being cited as a launch partner for Windows Phone headsets early in July, the phone was not widely on sale in the United States on the launch day, unlike phones from other launch partners, such as Samsung Focus
Samsung Focus
The Samsung Focus is a slate smartphone which runs Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. It features a 1 GHz Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ processor, a 4.0-inch Super AMOLED screen, and 8GB of internal storage...
and three other phones by HTC
HTC
-Companies:*HTC Corporation, a Taiwanese manufacturer of handheld devices*Harrisonville Telephone Company, a telephone company in Waterloo, Illinois*Horry Telephone Cooperative, a telephone cooperative in Horry County, South Carolina...
.
On October 11, in an official statement, Dell announced the phone to be available in the U.S. in holiday season of 2010. On November 8, Windows Phone was launched, and a very limited quantity of the phone was available for purchase only in the 7 Microsoft stores in the U.S. However, some early adopters of the phone received defective phones with Wi-Fi issues, SIM card issues, faulty headphone jack, and batteries marked as "Engineering Sample". Despite Dell urged users to return the phones, no phones were available in stock for exchange, and phones were not reshipped on November 19 as claimed.
After missing both the States-wide launch on November 8 and the online launch on November 15, Dell announced that they were "ramping up production" and intended to launch the phone in a bigger scale.
On December 1, Dell reintroduced the phone and began taking orders. Customers were given a shipping date of December 15. However, a day before the estimated shipping date, customers were informed that the shipping date was pushed until January 6, 2011, two months after its intended launch date, as the phones "were being reworked in the factories". This caused user uproar in many Windows Phone communities.
On December 16, Dell issued a new notice to assure that orders received before December 14 would be shipped before Christmas with overnight shipping upgrade and a free gift. However, the Estimated Delivery Date of the orders were not updated until a couple days later, causing confusion amongst anticipating customers. Several customers ordered on a later date received phones before those who ordered earlier. The promised shipping upgrade was also not fulfilled for many customers.
On February 3, 2011, Dell launched Venue Pro in India. The launch price of Dell Venue is Rs. 34,990.
On September 23, 2011, Dell posted that the Dell Venue Pro will get mango "later this fall" on the unlocked, Cincinnati Bell, and T-Mobile devices. The AT&T model, dell said "forthcoming".
Wi-Fi bug
The first batch of Dell Venue Pro phones to be manufactured suffered a bug which prevented them from logging onto secure Wi-FiWi-Fi
Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...
networks. Dell urged users with buggy phones to return them to the place of purchase and receive replacement handsets. In addition, even after the full launch of the Venue Pro, there have been reports of WiFi crashing the phone while downloading or using the data connection in some way.
RAM
Phones were reported to have only 256MB of RAM according to a third party SystemInfo application in the marketplace, which were considerably less than 512MB RAM as originally cited. Dell later contradicted on its DellCares Twitter page that in fact the device does have 512MB RAM and indicate at the operating system uses the memory before applications do.With the update codename "NoDo", the Venue Pro correctly report its RAM count as 512MB.