Venue PRO as Problematic as I've been hearing??

Question

I was quite interested in the Dell Venue Pro but I am astounded by the issues I have been reading (running hot, bad wifi, crashing) not to mention it only has 256Mb of ram?? Very disappointing to say the least, especially when all the other WP7 phones are coming with 512(Samsung Focus, HTC Surround and my present LG Quantum). This worries me greatly, low ram can cause lock ups, crashing and I would think the Venue isn't nearly as fast as my Quantum, the speed of the Quantum was a big selling point for me plus as a whole my Quantum has been FLAWLESS ... Honestly I am surprised Microsoft is allowing this, low memory will make WP7 look bad with the glitches and freezing it can cause.. Guess with all the problems I've been reading I will hold on to my Quantum and enjoy how WP7 was meant to be run, sad you would think Dell would roll out showstoppers first time out, why skimp on memory when they seemed to go all out on other features... I'm sure the guys over at Apple are getting a chuckle out of this..

One word of advise though from a previous user of a Samsung AMOLED display be very careful, they do Burn In, watch your settings.. If you google "AMOLED burn in" you will see what I mean, experianced it myself with a Impression and when I recently bought my Quantum myself and the AT&T sales rep noticed ever AMOLED phone on display had burn in, some worse then others... Best to run them with dark background and knock down the brightness if possible.

ms_fanboy76 · Answer

Its hard to answer the question because different people are having different experiences, and its hard to judge the overall issues based on the few angry people online.

I have had my Venue Pro crash/freeze a couple of times while using the marketplace. I do a hard reset and move on. How bad is it for me? The last time I did a hard reset was 2 weeks ago. I don't rely on wi-fi a whole lot, the few times I've jumped on a wi-fi network, I've had no apparent issues. Perhaps those times I needed to hard reset was when i was using wi-fi, but I wasn't really paying attention. I am more attentive now to see if thats when the freezes occur.

As far as RAM, I am still waiting to find out the truth behind this. The problem with it is that Dell hasn't officially said 'there's only 256 MB of RAM'. Every single independent website you read shows that stats as 512MB. One statement from Dell states there is 512MB, but that there is an error in the system that it only reports 256MB, but that isn't wholly confirmed either. There are many videos on youtube with people comparing the Venue Pro to the HD7, and shows the Venue Pro booting and loading apps slightly faster than the HD7.

Overall, the bugs that the DVP have had little impact on the overall performance and experience for me personally. I am the kind of person that would immediately be screaming for a refund if the phone was truly that bad. I grew to hate my old G1, loved my HD2 and now I love my Venue Pro.

I hope to see Dell resolve the issues w/ these handsets and am patient enough to wait. If it turns out the phone does not have 512MB of RAM, that's a consumer issue and I dont care what they're return policy is, I WILL get my money back. Anything else is simply waiting for an update.

Snake683 · Answer

I posted a while ago that the I suspected the DVP shared it's RAM with other system functions. This is similar to the way my video card shares it's RAM with the system on my Precision M4300. Wikipedia is reporting the following:

"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."

I have yet to find the twitter thread, but in a side-by-side comparison with my wife's HTC HD7 the DVP is just as fast or faster. I think we have the 512MB and as stated, some of the RAM is used by the operating system.

ZeusAlmight · Answer

The gentleman I talked to when I called the Dell mobile support assured me the crashing issue has been fixed in the newer builds and the Marketplace crashing is a WP7 problem which should be addressed in the upcoming update that will hit. I would recommend this phone despite having to send mine in for another.

bryanj26 · Answer

Wonderful. I hope Dell got Microsoft to fix the non-Marketplace crashes as well... except somehow I still don't think this is a MS problem.

missionsparta · Answer

The gentleman you talked to is full of it. I just got a  brand new phone as a replacement for my lemon phone.... you know what I have now? Two lemon phones.... nothing is fixed... a matter of fact, I think this one crashes more. The whole thing is a complete disaster.

Paul T · Answer

I don't think the Marketplace crashes are on Microsoft's end either, i have had my LG Quantum for quite some time and never had a problem using Marketplace and I have used it a lot... I see AT&T will be getting the Venue Pro in the coming months, that will make it much cheaper for me since I will be near my 2 year upgrade by then.. hopefully the issues will be ironed out by then and any tweaks needed will be tweaked,, I do like the design of the Venue, especially with WP7 as it's OS..

Does the Venue Pro's display dim when going to apps with heavy white backgrounds or pages?? The Samsung Focus's AMOLIED display does (especially with Internet Explorer, gmail, Office and PDF files..) it turns to a yellowish background but never when it's at the home screen or pictures..

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Venue PRO as Problematic as I've been hearing??

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