Dell Venue Pro review

                                                        Price as reviewed: Rs.34,990 

                                                        Best price: Rs.£459.00

Slide the new Dell Venue Pro in style and explore its utility for a business user. IT PRO India takes a closer look to find out. 

Dell Venue Pro is a stylish Windows Phone 7 device with a slide-out physical QWERTY keyboard, adding business appeal. The handset offers a stunning WVGA AMOLED capacitive, multi-touch display for easier navigation. It is available at a price tag of Rs. 34,990 for the Indian users.

If you are traveling, you can seamlessly operate on the go with built in Office Mobile. You can customize the Live Tiles on your start screen to ensure the positioning of important content on the front and center, easily noticeable with a momentary look.

Dell Venue Pro sports a classy look with a textured black plastic back, stainless steel edges and sheer Gorilla Glass screen. Unlike other smartphones, Venue Pro is a lot more bulky at 192grams with a fairly large 4.1inch screen and a sliding keyboard.

On the flip side, its curved back causes the Windows Phone 7smartphone to move unsteadily from side to side when placed on a flat surface. Therefore, we suggest the user to hold in one hand when using the virtual keyboard.

Unlike the HTC 7 Pro’s landscape QWERTY keyboard arrangement, the Venue Pro’s screen slides up in portrait mode — a la the Palm Pre 2 — on a satisfyingly sprung mechanism. The keyboard occupies the bottom third of the case and the limited width (55mm) means the keys are small and closely spaced. Their tall shape, domed profile and positive click makes them comfortable to use. What’s more, the keyboard works just as well as the Windows Phone 7 on-screen version — or better, depending on individual preference.

One thing to bear in mind is that the on-screen keyboard is still required for typing with the Venue Pro in landscape mode, although the auto screen rotation is usefully disabled when the physical keyboard is exposed to prevent input confusion. As with the HTC 7 Pro, Dell has made a couple of odd keyboard layout decisions — though we concede that these may fall under the domain of Microsoft’s WP7 device specification.