Yes, it’s the Dell Venue, as well as no, you still can’t buy a single outward Hong Kong or South Korea just yet. All we can assume is that this Android phone is confronting a same production issues as its WP7 cousin, though hopefully we’re wrong. Anyhow, what counts is that we’ve finally gotten our hands upon a sell unit of the Snapdragon-packing Venue. So is it value a wait for for Androiders distanced from the Far East? And will this handset be a answer for the love-hate attribute with the Streak? Head upon right past a break to find out.
Dell Venue examination

Hardware
It’s tough to deny which Dell’s come a prolonged way with a styling of its mobile devices, elaborating from a cheap-looking Axim Windows Mobile PDAs (although a X50 array received most love from the community) to a right away eye-catching Venue twin. Like the Streak, we’ve had people inquiring us about or during least eyeing during the Venue — we’re guessing it’s often to do with the rounded chrome sides contrasting the black body, as well as a colorful 4.1-inch AMOLED shade positively helps as well despite its low prominence underneath strong illumination. Upon closer inspection, you’ll additionally notice a subtly curved “Shear Design” Gorilla Glass — which is additionally featured upon the Venue Pro — that covers most the complete face of a phone, to illustrate contributing towards the Venue’s reward look no matter what point of view you look at it from. Funnily enough, Dell didn’t place most importance upon the Shear Design’s ergonomic benefits, but a little of us feel that the curvature creates our thumb-swiping gesticulate slightly more comfortable. Maybe it’s only us.

On the associated note, a Venue’s rounded sides as well as curved behind additionally provide better hold, nonetheless there have been the few occasions when our naughty fingertips slipped around the behind distant sufficient to meddle with the hold input, especially when we’re lying in bed. Looking behind during the alternative phones for a reason check, we realised which their sharper edges along the screen are actually pretty in effect at stopping our fingertips from accidentally touching the shade; whereas the Venue lacks such “underline” to warn our fingers. Ah well, guess we have to sacrifice the small for a looks.

Going back to a glass: despite the careful doing as well as short ownership so far, our Venue’s screen has somehow managed to amass a couple of light scratches. It sure was the warn since a Gorilla Glass’ considerable performance in our previous woe test — perhaps the travel by the different climates of Hong Kong, Las Vegas and London made a element some-more vulnerable. We’ve written to Corning to see either this is a probability, so watch this space for an update.

Also conspicuous at a close stretch is a uneven finish on a chrome sides — slowly lean them lengthwise under the mark of light and you’ll see small ripples running along them. That said, these are hardly conspicuous from bland use, though we have a feeling which sure pattern houses like Apple and Nokia would scowl on this seemingly minor smirch. Regardless, we shouldn’t complain too much — HK$3,999 (US$514) isn’t bad for the Froyo HSDPA smartphone which packs the 1GHz Snapdragon, 1GB ROM, 512MB RAM, a great extravagant 8 megapixel camera (we’ll come to that later), and a 1400mAh battery which keeps us connected as well as entertained for a full day (with mainly 3G connection, some WiFi time, Twitter notifications, plenty of camera usage, a little Internet browsing, and some music on the go). Speaking of that, we speckled an annoying bug when it comes to charging: we’ve never managed to charge a phone from 0 percent regulating the wall outlet, even after withdrawal it plugged in overnight; nonetheless plugging it into the computer gets it charging again, and about an hour later — approbation, just a single hour — we get full juice again regardless of the charging method. Coincidentally, we’ve also seen a same charging issue upon a Venue Pro as well as a Streak as good, so here’s hoping which Dell’s engineers are reading this examination.

Dell Venue vs Dell Venue Pro

Of course, we haven’t lost about a single of the many critical aspects of the phone: audio quality. We have no complaints about a earpiece’s performance, as well as noise suppression isn’t bad even in the loud environment — it takes only one or dual seconds to regulate to your voice. The loudspeaker, upon the alternative hand, gently muddles phone calls from the other finish of a line, as well as exaggeration is already strong when playing music during around 70 percent volume (and this is usually Diana Krall, not complicated steel. Even a Venue’s headphone mode isn’t perfect — we get a fair volume of immobile noise when the earphones are plugged in; whereas the alternative phones produce the much cleanser audio by a same buds. Audiophiles need not request here.

Software

If you’ve already taken a gander at our Streak 2.2 refurbish examination, afterwards you’ve pretty much seen this all prior to. Straight out of the box you get a full-screen Stage UI widgets (for music, Twitter, Facebook, recent apps, contacts, and mail), discerning scrolling between homescreens in the area below the widgets, the backup and revive app (for SMS, ringtones, bookmarks, apps, etc.), a sync utility to go with the Windows desktop apartment (for multimedia and Outlook government; installer preloaded upon the 16GB microSD label, Quickoffice suite, TuneIn Radio app (no FM airwave, yet, and Swype set of keys. The common every-day apps like Music, Gallery, as well as Camera have been of a stock season, as well as patently you get Flash as well as live wallpaper support to boot. All is good here, solely for a backup and revive application: it doesn’t really work. Well, it managed to revive once, though afterwards it failed to revive the apps from a same backup after our second and third factory resets, despite the confirmation messages that said otherwise. Until Dell as well as Nero repair this bug, the recommendation is to just make a new backup after each restoration.

Even though superficially the Venue’s OS is matching to the one on a Streak, we beheld which the former has no landscape mode for a homescreens. Ironically, this is quite the opposite of the portrait-less problem we had on the Streak before 2.2. But upon the bright side, a overall UI has been flattering well-spoken for us, as well as perhaps that’s why Dell’s motionless to invalidate homescreen rotation — we did notice which there was a two to three-second delay in between revolution upon a Streak. As for benchmark opening, we got about 33 FLOPS upon Linpack, 30fps on Neocore, as well as a common measure in between 801 and 827 on Quadrant which is just behind the Galaxy S. Nothing superb, but zero bad, possibly.
Dell Venue screenshots

Camera

Ah, now this is where it gets interesting. As referred to progressing, a Venue comes with an 8 megapixel AF camera that doubles as a 720p camcorder, though there isn’t the front-facing camera. As with a resolution, design quality has also been since a big boost compared to a Streak — the colors have been almost spot-on even when cloudy or at night, although infrequently it requires a couple of shots to get a focus just right in the dark. As far as settings go, you’d onslaught to find anything blank — have a look during the stash of screenshots of the camera app in the program gallery and you’ll see the immeasurable series of options to tinker with. Just to name the few: face tracking, macro, exposure, scene modes, color effects, auto exposure modes, and many more. In fact, there have been probably too most of them upon which disorderly menu — we roughly missed a nifty panorama mode (it stitches four shots together, and you get visible assist for aligning when shooting) nearby a bottom of a prolonged list, not to mention what a suffering it is having to corkscrew all a approach down to capacitate or invalidate it at launch.

Another niggle we have is a lens cover on the battery door. It doesn’t cause any problem in well-lit places, though at night, we beheld that the cover is prone to adding mist as well as reflections to our images, so be warned. A distant some-more critical though less few complaint lies in a camcorder mode — you’ll notice which a night time clip in the representation video next suffers from two glitches early upon, followed by audio as well as video going slightly out of sync. But since afterwards we haven’t been able to replicate this bug. Otherwise, video quality isn’t bad, although it could do with the small bump in frame rate.
Dell Venue representation shots

Wrap-up
All in all, Dell’s delivered the plain phone which comes in nice package, as well as the form factor that’s no doubt more tolerable for a average joe. For what it’s value, a Venue is certainly the very attractive deal (in Hong Kong, during slightest, generally with its relatively brand new OS, sharp UI, as well as a surprisingly good camera. If Dell gets around to tweaking a charging emanate, audio quality, camera app, as well as camcorder performance, then a Venue would pretty most be the must-have phone. Well, except we all know that it probably won’t get its 2.3 update until a gazillion months later. Anyway, it’d be great enough if Dell can amend some of these bugs prior to the Venue lands in other countries, if ever.

Via Engadget