Gadgetory

in days of old when phones were bold and varied from the rectangular the venue was a smartphone some found quite spectacular it slid and curved and tapped and glowed it stood apart and all alone oh it was a stirring sight this one and only dell phone a michael fisher and this is the pocket now throwback review of the Dell Venue Pro okay so it wasn't the first or the only smartphone from Dell but you might call it the first modern Dell handheld and in 2011 the Venu probe was very special indeed it was part of the first wave of products running Microsoft's then new smartphone platform Windows Phone 7 and among those it shined the venue pros hardware design was so future forward it still holds up today it displayed sharp angles in a side view but those led into a curved cross-section helped along by a slightly convex bow to the gorilla glass on the front the curvature on the back made the phone quite comfortable to hold and it's nearly 200 gram mass and textured back cover gave it a quality hand feel that's pretty tough to find in plastic phones nowadays of course it was a very thick device but the trade-off that rare QWERTY keyboard was well worth it to those who needed a physical board under the thumbs the rubbery keys offered a click enos that made up for their limited travel but the keyboard was pretty small for such a big device elsewhere the buttons were less impressive with weak haptic feedback on the capacitive keys and a mushy a lack of tactility to the volume power and camera buttons the camera itself was also pretty weak but considering the beauty of the rest of the hardware and other benefits like a powerful bottom firing speaker it was easy to forgive those shortcomings our demo model here from the personal collection of Adam Lane is running Windows Phone 7.5 and while it's certainly missing many of the modern touches that have arrived since it also feels more pure in a way Microsoft was still aggressively pushing the Metro design language in the venue pros time and it felt more consistent more unified and streamlined than the platform's current incarnation the company was also still making a big effort to stand apart from the crowd by pushing facebook Messenger integration and the native social features of the me and people hubs all of which have since been either toned down or totally removed along with other details we didn't realize we missed until taking mango for another spin of course there's no going back and that's especially true for Dell which announced back in 2012 that it was quitting the global smartphone market in a sense that's a good thing as gorgeous as it is the venue Pro had some serious hardware and software issues in its infancy while many of those were eventually ironed out the real problem was Dells inconsistent customer service and its inability to meet shipping deadlines problems which stretched back to Windows Phones debut so what was arguably the most compelling Windows Phone was also one of the hardest to buy that's exactly the kind of difficulty Microsoft didn't need while it was first trying to push its smartphone platform and that's even more true in 2014 what makes the memory of the venue Pro especially poignant is the era that it represented there are good-looking and powerful Windows phones out there today some of us had pocket now carry them as daily drivers and maybe we'll see some of Microsoft's new hardware partners do some crazy things in their quest to stand out but nothing can recreate that particular mixture of hope anticipation and nostalgia of the Dell Venue Pro in 2011 a rare form factor in a beautiful package from a brand trying to make a comeback on a fresh new platform seeking its own Redemption song those were exciting days indeed share your own memories of the Dell Venue Pro down in the comments hit subscribe and like while you're down there and check out our old review coverage on the device here on YouTube and at pocketnow.com till next time this has been michael fisher and captain to phones on twitter thanks for time traveling with us and we'll see you on the next one