Dell’s Venue Pro Smartphone Appears Online In UK

The Venue Pro, which runs Windows Phone 7 and is Dell’s first stab at entering the competitive smartphone market, will appear early next month, according to a UK retail website.

Expansys has a page dedicated to Dell’s Venue Pro handset, which was announced at the launch of Windows Phone 7 operating system, stating that Dell’s smartphone will be available from 8 November as expected, for a cost of £499.99, and it will be SIM free.

Venue Pro Features

eWEEK Euroe handled a Venue Pro at the UK launch of Windows Phone 7, and it is a relatively large phone overall somewhat thicker and heavier than other Windows Phoes, thanks to its slider keyboard. It runs a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. It has a 4.1-inch Amoled touchscreen with 800×480 pixels and a 5Mpixel camera with digital zoom and LED flash.

Storage wise it seems to be a little lacking, offering 512MB of RAM and just 1GB of internal storage. There is a microSDHC memory card (although there is no word on what limit this can take).

The phone also comes with the usual features such as 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but it also has an accelerometer and  proximity sensor, as well as a digital compass and Bing Maps for all your navigation needs. It includes a browser and – like all Windows Phone 7 devices – Office document editing facilities (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). And it allows the user to play Xbox Live games.

That said, there is little doubt that Dell will have its work cut out for it with the Venue Pro, as it enters a hugely competitive mobile market that is awash with cutting edge handsets from well established handset vendors.

Added to this, for many observers, Windows Phone 7 represents Microsoft’s last attempt to break into the crowded mobile operating system market, after its unpopular Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system failed to make much of an impact.

Lots Of Other Phone 7 Handsets

However, the Venue Pro does seem to be the only Windows Phone 7 handset that will be available SIM free, as other handsets running Microsoft’s mobile operating system will be available on a contract basis only. It is also the only one with a slider keyboard available in the UK, so far.

For example, HTC is offering three Windows Phone 7 devices. The HTC HD7 (exclusive to O2) costs £379 or free on a £40 per month contract. It has a monster 4.3-inch screen, so if you want to go big, this is the phone for you. The HTC Mozart (exclusive to Orange) is on a £35 contract, and it has a better-than average 8 megapixel camera with xenon flash, and a smaller 3.7 inch screen.

Meanwhile the HTC Trophy looks like being the cheapest Windows Phone 7 device, at just £25 per month exclusively from Vodafone.

T-Mobile, 3 and Orange all have Samsung’s Omnia at £40 per month, and LG has the Optimus 7, also known as the E900, which is the phone that was featured in eWEEK Europe UK’s review of Windows Phone 7.