Dell Venue Pro crashing

Just a follow up from my last post. Its been about a day now since I've had a new micro SD card in my phone and I am shocked at how this is like an entirely different device almost. I re-downloaded all the Xbox Live games I had bought previously and purchased a couple more for good measure and not one single lock up and battery pull, same with music from Zune. Even more bizarre to me is that I swear it seems as if the device is a bit more responsive when opening files, etc. Now, its only been a day and the thing might go all crazy on me later but so far I can't believe the difference. The seething frustration I had every time I did something over wireless is gone and now I actually enjoy using the device. Hopefully this performance keeps holding up.

I'm not suggesting this will work for anyone else or that micro SD cards are the only (or even main) issue on any particular device, just reporting my experience so far.

I too am geting ready to try the memory card swap.  Its a shame that is how it has to be.  My tech support rep told me I'd have to wait until the update for a possible fix for the crashing, and that's too long without a reliable phone.

I also just saw this article discussing more of the issues with the phone.  Seems like everything most of us are seeing.

anythingbutiphone.com/901

I really hope  Dell cleans up this issue. I had an xps m140, now my Dell Studio 17 paired with my DVP.  I like Dell, but they are definitely needing to work out some of these issues.

I actually just received my 16GB DELL Venue Pro two days ago. (ordered new straight from DELL)  The phone is honestly great when it works but the stupid thing freezes too much for me to even really properly use it. 

I've noticed that it tends freeze when doing stuff that uses the Wi-Fi connection heavily, making anything that involves the internet on this phone pretty much unusable for me.  The easiest way to reproduce this issue is to simply start downloading a large app in marketplace while going off to do something else like surf Facebook or whatever.  This is an extremely annoying issue; does anyone know if DELL actually has a real fix coming out for this? 

The device also freezes up sometimes right when I plug it into a power source, it is quite annoying really....

I plan on calling them sometime soon...cuz this is seriously a pain...I paid a full $500 for this phone and all I want it to do is just work properly...

One thing I don't understand is how some are saying that replacing the microSD card solves this issue completely. (also how the hell did they not find this during testing?)  If the issue was a faulty microSD card in the first place then why would it only be freezing on wi-fi?  Also, could we get a list of working microSD replacements going?

OS Version:  7.0.7004.0

Firmware Revision Number:  2250.1500.7004.105

Hardware Revision Number:  112.576.2.0

Bootloader Version:  7.27.1.0

Chip SOC Version:  0.36.2.0

Unfortunately I have read to many people that have solved this thing with a card swap, to by an urban legend anymore. I am getting ready to also. The right thing for Dell to do right now, is to come out and say that if you want to fix the device yourselves and pay money to swap out the cards, that they won't void your warranty as a result of that alone. For crying out loud, it is as easy as changing the CD in your car stereo.

The denied the whole thing to begin with -- that killed a good three weeks. Then they put us on hold forever trying to decide what to do. After more people started screaming, they shipped us replacement units, knowing darn well that NOTHING was different about them; just in order to stall for more time. Then they told many of us that a software fix was imminent. Well that was two weeks ago. Now we are being told that it will be when the Windows Phone update comes out in three weeks. My Microsoft source has told me that the reason it has been delayed four weeks is because they are trying to help Dell fix this mess.

Read the paragraph above Dell. If at the beginning you acknowledge the issue and began a process of repairing this, we would be done. But you lies and played a smoke and mirrors game. There are other 'groups' now involved in the issue. As a result you have dragged this on to the point, that the only decent and RSPONSIBLE thing to do, is give everyone the green light to swap the cards out themselves and promise not to hold the warranty thing over their head, if the backlight (or something else obviously not related to the card) goes out. You may not like it, but you have no one else to fault and anything else at this point is just you trying to stick all the pain from this situation on your CUSTOMERS instead of who the blame should be on .... DELL.

You have done NOTHING right in the 10 weeks since you sent out LEMONS. For crying out loud already. DO SOMETHING RESPONSIBLE FOR ONCE.

Ok. Well I bought the DVP without knowing about all of the issues. Before this I had / have a HD7 and it worked flawlessly. It lead me to believe that WP7 was the most stable operating system I have ever used, and that includes IOS. Well coming over to the DVP, it felt immediately different. Glitchy, wifi issues, lock up. My Build was January 13. 2011, so a later build.

I checked out this forum and other posts and decided I would go for the card swap. One thing I noticed was that my black tape didnt have anything printed on it. No VOID or anything. Just a black piece of tape. Do others' have "VOID" printed on it? Anyway I swapped my card with the Sandisk 32gb, and its working flawlessly. I have synced with my 10 accounts, working on wifi, and now transferring 15GB of music and videos. All seems remarkebly stable. i will post back in a week if I experience any issues, but already it hasn't frozen on any of the things that would normally freeze it. It's as stable at my HD7.

I dont know how a batch of cards could be "bad" at this scale though. Something wierd going on...

Which 32 GB sandisk are you using? Do you have an exact model number or serial number? At this point they can claim your warranty is void all the want. I already have it documented that they are not fixing anything with their warrantys; so they are leaving it on us now. I also am working with "groups" and different process are under way. I was pretty much informed by them, what I just stated : They had a chance numerous times to repair these things under warranty. At this point someone fixing their device after they have shown the inability to, would not be voiding your warranty.

According to ZeeDVP's earlier post:

"The card I'm using now is a class 2 32GB Sandisk card (Sandisk part number SDSDQM-032G-B35) which seems to be stable (plus you get 32GB :) )"

I am going to order it from Amazon. 

We should  all just swap our cards out and demand DELL to refund us the cost.

I don't know if it is hardware or software related but it definitely feels to me as if it is Dell (its either hardware or perhaps some firmware on Dell's side related to the device itself). I doubt this is Microsoft as a) when I swapped my MicroSD card to an off the shelf 32GB card the lock-ups stopped immediately and b) a friend of mine who has an HTC WP7 device on at&t never had the issues that I had with my DVP.

Also, while I'm at it - following up from my swapping of the MicroSD card for an off the shelf 32GB card a week or so ago: since I've done that, I have had only one freeze. That came while playing a Xbox Live game, listening to Zune and hitting the Windows, then back key. I had a feeling I was taxing the device a little bit after some heavy use and sure enough, it froze. Other than that one time, no other lock-ups or crashes - the constant battery pulling related to wifi is definetly gone. In fact, the one lock-up I had playing the game wasn't on wifi at all, I was in the subway station.

Again, not sure what the underlying issue is but given everything I've read and experienced, I tend to believe this is a Dell mess up and not Microsoft.

I'm not sure the wi-fi even needs to be connected to anything... just turn it off.  I haven't had a single issue in the last 7 weeks with wi-fi disabled. 

P.S. - Dell, we know you're watching.... end this PR nightmare and just give us all a new SD card and guarantee us, no...add 90 days to our warranties!

So we should walk around using 3G data pulling down 1.5Mbps vs 7Mbps over wi-fi?  Unacceptable.  

This is a problem Dell needs to address.  It's a simple fix, and they just need to send out free micro SD cards.

Here is another article talking about the fix for the DVP:  anythingbutiphone.com/1016

I just got off the phone with a Dell support rep.  She apologized for any inconvenience and told me that Dell is aware of the issue and they are working to identify the cause.  Once that is done they will roll out a solution which might include software update, phone swap, etc.

I am in their system  and set to be notified once they have a solution.

I suggest everyone with the problem call them and let them know; if not to get it fixed then to put pressure on them and get you into their system.

However frustrating DVP is, Dell's support comes through.  I just hope they do a real fix, not just a "duct tape" solution.

I only get edge in my apartment, so i use WiFi as fast as i can and then disable it before my phone freezes. The price we paid for the phone includes the WiFi antenna.Disabling a feature we paid for is to fix an issue is ridiculous

Hey, by no means am I defending them... just saying what finally made me calm down and stop getting so angry... I get 4-5 bars of 3G at home and at work, but I would definitely rather have my wi-fi working, and I expect that it will...