yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Venue Pro General] benjaminries:
EDIT: Feb 14 / 2012 - Wow. It has been a while. I pre-ordered one of the original DVPs, went on the roller-coaster ride of trying to get it SIM unlocked, returned it to Dell and took the 15% restocking hit, then watched in agony as a simple "just email Dell" free unlocking solution came available about a month later. I've had a second-hand HD2 through most of 2011, running various builds of WP7 and Android, until the digitizer bit the dust. Just snapped up a DVP on eBay - I'm back baby! Time to update this thread.

Whether you're a DVP owner, future owner or still on the fence about a purchase, it might be useful to have a single thread listing the known issues with this model (and any discovered fixes, workarounds, etc.). I'll try to keep this up-to-date based on comments below. Have I missed anything?

Compass driver broken by Mango update

Much-discussed; interop unlock or custom firmware would allow a fix (i.e. flashing an unsigned cab could potentially put the old driver back)

No HSPA or roaming triangle indicators

Diagnosis: software issue... can't get an "H" or triangle symbol to appear in the relevant contexts.

Apparently this is only an issue on TMO-US branded units, and it is entirely cosmetic. Interop unlock would allow us to make the necessary registry edits to bring back the HSPA indicator.

Camera: slow shutter speed = blurry indoor shots

Partially improved in successive firmware updates

Flaky reception

Somewhat improved, according to user reports.

Cell radio: drops connections when switching from 2G to 3G

Fixed by Dell in new units.

WiFi: some devices can't connect to secure networks

Fixed by Dell in new units.

SIM: error

Fixed by Dell in new units.

Windows Phone 7 general issues

No copy & paste

Fixed in NoDo

Email: forwarding from non-Exchange account uses .eml attachment instead of inline text

Fixed

Camera: issues with retaining settings

Fixed
[Venue Pro General] jcoob:
Headphone jack: curved, bad connection?

I don't think the headphone Jack poor connection is explicitly caused by the curved jack. Checking out my friends HTC desire, I noticed that it too has a curved jack that doesn't completely cover the headphone plug.
[Venue Pro General] benjaminries:
Thanks. I'm partly basing this on a youtube video from a DVP owner who demonstrates how the earphone jack won't plug all the way in, because of the curved design.

Can any actual DVP owners comment on this? Is the problem widespread?
[Venue Pro General] benjaminries:
RE: SIM locking of Dell Venue Pro

Note: the following threads discuss DVP-US frequencies, possible SIM-locking to T-mobile (even for off-contract, paid-in-full devices), etc.:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=858181

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=857572

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=838105&page=51
[Venue Pro General] pNoyr3D:
Awesome thread, love the idea & I haven't really heard much of the issues listed here but its great that you put it out there.

Hopefully many get fixed in the upcoming update in January or even the new devices.

Many don't seem to apply to me like the camera since I rarely ever use the camera but the 2G to 3G one is pretty big.
[Venue Pro General] eyan15:
The camera was bad in the first phone I received (Engineering Sample) but in the next phone the Cam was alright. This unit didn't have that slow shutter problem

The images were comparable to HD7.
[Venue Pro General] sureloch:
Might want to add these to the Windows phone 7 list:

1) No real multi-tasking support to speak of in phone 7, even the "back" button doesn't bring you back to an active program in most cases, but the program has to re-initialize.

2) No support for mobile hotspot function in phone 7

3) No true "live tile" support for 3rd party apps (like twitter etc...); more like dead tiles.

I am concerned that the speed of WP7 is dependent on only having 1 app running and therefore MS doesn't want multi-tasking.
[Venue Pro General] benjaminries:
This stuff crosses over into general criticisms of the OS. I'm trying to restrict bugs to things that were obviously overlooked or have been announced as upcoming fixes - not new features or disagreements over design.
[Venue Pro General] KilZone:
This is an Windows Phone 7 bug, all devices suffer from this. So while this is an issue nonetheless, you should not decide not to get the Dell Venue Pro based on this 'bug' alone. If you want a Windows Phone 7 device, you will have this problem, hopefully Microsoft will fix it in the next update.
[Venue Pro General] benjaminries:
Thanks for the correction; I was under the impression that each OEM made their own customized Camera app. Curious if they all suffer from the same problem - hopefully that means it will be fixed in the January update.
[Venue Pro General] Wonderstruck80:
This is the only thing preventing me from ordering this phone. Can anyone else confirm this issue has in fact been resolved?
[Venue Pro General] benjaminries:
We might not get this confirmed until late December - as far as I can tell by the forums, many of the early birds who got their DVPs from the Microsoft Stores are still waiting on replacement units. Hopefully one or two other people who have already got a good replacement can chime in here, but I fear we won't know the status of these issues until the big wave of online orders start shipping out.

Call me crazy, but I think that if this is a simple software issue, Dell will fix it. In the alternative maybe we'll see some homebrew camera apps next year that we can sideload :)
[Venue Pro General] nrfitchett4:
1. That is the fault of the developers of the apps. The OS supports save states so when you go back it resumes where you left off. You can see this in OEM apps like IE, but the 3rd party browsers don't do this.

2. Not sure if that is in the works

3. Since when? Weatherbug, weather channel, flixter, beez twit app all support live tiles.
[Venue Pro General] benjaminries:
This is an interesting one. I agree with you that a lot of this is developer-related, but I think Microsoft will still end up making some adjustments to multitasking next year. Remember that the internal system apps (like IE) are permitted to do true background multitasking by the OS, while 3rd-party apps aren't.

I have read that the save state thing is kind of tricky because apps often don't get a warning that they are about to be put to sleep - the OS just responds instantly when you hit "back" or "home". So the only apps that can take advantage of this feature are the ones that are saving their state all the time - which is only practical for some app designs. A 3rd-party music or video app might make a record of whatever song or video you're watching, but must it save the elapsed track time every second? Every 10 seconds? Whatever granularity is chosen will be the state you can return to after the app loses focus.

MS needs to allow true background multitasking/threading in a few limited situations:

- the app loses focus, receives a "save your current state" message from the OS, and is allowed to save its state in the background

- the app sends a tiny bit of data to the cloud every 5 minutes (i.e. Google Latitude) - MS could maybe impose a "maximum lines of code" on this upload function?

- the app does a tiny bit of processing with the push data it gets from the cloud, without necessarily getting user interaction

I believe allowing these three types of multitasking would really open up possibilities for developers.
[Venue Pro General] KilZone:
What you say is not entirely true. Applications do receive a warning when the system is going to navigate away from the application, just the way like you suggest it as the first option. However in practice it is a little more complicated than that.

There are 4 events in Windows Phone 7, Launch/Close and Activated/Deactivated. The first two are just the startup and closing of the two while the latter is the tombstoning warning and retrieval event. So when your application receives it's 'deactivated' message, it is allowed to do some final saving of it's state (there is a time limit, but it's rather flexible). Windows Phone will navigate away even though the save state hasn't been completed yet, so that part of 'multi-tasking' is implemented.

The problem you all mention comes from the fact that 'home' and 'back' are not the same for 3rd-party applications (and even some internal ones). Back is generally seen as 'back one page' and 'home' as 'go to the start screen'. However if you are 1 page away from the home screen, the 'back' button will act as 'close' button... So it will sent a 'close' event to the application, rather than the 'deactivated' event (and not allowing the application to tombstone itself). This way, the next time you boot the application it will restart as it will receive the 'launch' event and not the 'activated' one. Easiest 'solution' is to use the 'home' button instead, however this will mess up your 'back'-botton behaviour a little.

Basically I think Microsoft needs to 'fix' the 'back'-button acting as 'close'-button, as no-one thinks it will act this way.
[Venue Pro General] benjaminries:
LOL, it sounds like I was pretty darn close for a lay-person. I don't have a WP7 device yet, but tell me, how often to do you navigate away from an app OTHER than by going to the homescreen? The only other way I can imagine is by accepting some kind of toast push notification, pressing the Search button or the Camera button.

The bottom line is that MS intended to do this better - but as you have said, apps are often losing focus in a way that doesn't even allow the app to save its state, even if it has been designed to do so. Apps should be given a chance to save their state whether they're being minimized or closed, so they can return to the last state whether they're being woken up or started fresh.
[Venue Pro General] KilZone:
You were quite close indeed and you're right that this is quite an irritating bug (Microsoft might say it's a feature, but let's keep it at a bug for now). Mostly because as a Windows Phone user you have no idea when an application 'closes' or 'tombstones'...

Agreed, I think you have a valid point there. It certainly would increase the multi-task-experience (even though it is not true multi-tasking) as all applications would seem as if they were running next to eachother (as was the idea initially). It might be nice if an application could implement 'tombstoning' when it receives the 'close' command, which is not available right now (no access to the tombstoning service).
[Venue Pro General] sureloch:
I hope you are correct as I have ordered thte dvp, but though the suspend/resume multi-tasking sounds like a good idea, it seems extremely weak in practice.

Here is a clip showing the types of behaviors that concern me including the live tile issue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNfpPrto07Q&feature=related

WP7 is a very elaborate and beautiful operating system which must require heavy resources to accomplish. Perhaps we will have to wait for dual core devices before we will see WP7 multi-tasking like we would hope. But it seems like the caching and accessing current tasks to preserve resouces could be done more effectively, and would definitely improve the user experience.
[Venue Pro General] Jim Chapman:
The App Style Guide is clear about the 'right' app behaviour, and I'm sure Microsoft consider it a feature, not a bug. It enforces a set of rules that they just expect users to get used to:

1) Switching away from an app (e.g. hitting search or launch) should leave the app in a state where you can come back to it (and pick up again from where you left off) by pressing the back button.

2) The way to terminate an app is to 'back out' of it. Once you have terminated an app, you can't come back to it.

3) Whenever you launch an app from the menu, it will start from scratch.

Microsoft's own apps follow this pattern.

These rules are intended to give the feeling of 'all apps existing in a stack' (like the stack of navigations you move through when using a web browser). I think that represents a conscious design decision on Microsoft's part ... maybe a bad design decision, but not a bug as such.

By the way, an app can trap and modify the behaviour of the 'back' key. Actually, the developer has to do this, to ensure that the app does the right thing in all cases (for instance, if the app has a popup dialog open, the 'back' key will close the popup dialog, not back out of the app). This does give the app a chance to respond to the 'back out' action, by saving state or by putting up a 'do you really want to quit?' message. But Rule #3 above means that when the app is restarted, it has to look like a new instance of the app, not a continuation of the instance that the user terminated.
[Venue Pro General] benjaminries:
Interesting. It would be nice if there was at least some subtle little toast or something like "do you want to pick up where you left off?", maybe just for apps that are super-complex, at the developer's discretion.

Whatever MS and developers did, I'm glad that MS appears to recognize that users aren't super happy with the outcome - I believe we'll see a change in the second update of 2011.
[Venue Pro General] Peew971:
With the latest delay, they'd better have a flawless product when it's released.
[Venue Pro General] KilZone:
You're probably correct in saying Microsoft considers this a feature, I think so too. Though while this is a feature, it behaves different than 'expected' and does not imply (or acts like) multi-tasking, that's why I said 'let us call it a bug for now'.

If Microsoft would just always sent a 'tombstone'-command to the application on single-press back, it would be better by far for several reasons. The biggest, while the user cannot go 'back' to that app by pressing 'back', the user does 'continue' where it left of when pressing the live tile or application in the start list. This makes the operating system act like it has multi-tasking, though it doesn't actually have it. (I know that developers can implement this themselves by implementing the 'OnBackKeyPress'-event, but they shouldn't have too - or at least that is what I think.)

Microsoft could for example implement a long-press back key to 'quit' an application. It can give a little toast saying 'Are you sure you want to quit this application? This will restart the application next time, loosing all unsaved information' or something.

A little more on topic. People around me are either getting their Venue Pro's (none actually received one yet, though 2 have shipping confirmations) and also reviews start showing up. What I noticed is that the headphone-jack is not different from the earlier models, would that require special headphones to work with this phone? That would be awful I think (though I'm still using my initial hTC headsets I got when I ordered my phone over 2 years ago...).
[Venue Pro General] im.thatoneguy:
No problems with any of my headphones. Maybe if you had a large adapter on there.
[Venue Pro General] 937dytboi:
Well today, I put this thing to use. It froze up twice on me, battery felt a bit warm, not sure if it was thermal. Wish it had a reset button. Phone seems to lag sometimes in certain apps. Capacitive buttons seem to work when they want to. I guess the capacitive windows button doesnt work in every instance when you want to cancel all the way out.

Im still trying to get use to the virtual keyboard, i seem to hit the wrong buttons sometimes. Physical keyboard is very cramped for my hands. reminds me of the old touch pro buttons. The power button wake up seems to take a second before you see anything on the screen. earpiece isnt all that great, not as clear as I thought it was going to be, seems to have a slight rattle when people speak. Speakers werent what I expected either and this was a part that people praised this phone on. The sound quality wasnt that great to me. When turned to max volume it broke up and distorted. Speakers seem to have quite a bit of treble.

Other than that I havent had to many other problems. Im pretty satisfied with my purchase, just wish the marketplace was up to par.
[Venue Pro General] CrownSeven:
Flaky bluetooth?

I've been having issues with the bluetooth connectivity between my DVP and my Audi.

I sometimes have to re-initiate the connection from my car, which doesn't always work. And when it finally does connect, it doesn't maintain the connection. Unfortunately this is a big deal for me since I spend a lot of time in the car. Calling Dell support tomorrow to see what they say.

I've got a DroidX and an iPhone3gs, both of them have zero issues with bluetooth and my vehicle.
[Venue Pro General] 937dytboi:
Surprisingly I dont have any issues with the DVP and my Kenwood screen in my car linked up fine and doesnt have any type of connectivity issues. What software does the audi run if you know?
[Venue Pro General] cdgoin:
Somewhat fixed.. somewhat not.. I will say my DVP takes great outdoor pics and terrible low light pics.. BUT That said, its no worse than any of my previous phones. THe outdoor and good light shots look awesome with the 5 MP camera. That said with 5MP shrinking them down to 1024x768, etc.. even slightly blurry photos clear up nicely. Overall if I want good photos, to print, I won't be using my cell phone.

New shipment does not have this problem

New shipment does not have this problem

I have this problem still.. anytime you boot up the camera you have to adjust settings.

Havent seen this particular problem.. But I have heard a audible loud static sound when changing from tower to tower occasionally that I don't remember picking up on my Dash 3G. That said it happened once or twice so far. So it could be interference from something else.

Not sure if these are related problems or not. BUt would seem to be problems with either the radio software, or hardware.

D/L Speeds.. My Dash 3G also gets 1.2-2 MB speed, The DVP 800K.

Dash 3G shows E/3G/H - DVP only E or 3G and shows no recognition of a H band.

Not sure if that means it doesn't work on HSPDA or not.. or if it just doesnt show that it does. Nothing in the settings to mess with, so I can't tell. What I can tell is that the phone connection and signal is no where as good as my Dash 3G.

Anyone else noticed a weak signal..? I am more prone to noticing them since my house since on the boundary of three cell towers and reception can vary greatly all over my yard. I have actually mapped where I get good signal and how strong with my signal is with my Dash 3G. I havent gone back and doen the same with the DVP yet.. but probably will. Currently my perception is that it definately has weak reception.

That all said, have not dropped a call and the quality of the calls have been really clear.
[Venue Pro General] dhafiz:
Can someone please post the Network Selection and APN settings they are using on their phone to access 3G? I just received my DVP 16GB, and I can't access data.

The settings on my phone are:

Network Selection: automatic

APN: epc.tmobile.com

Username: <blank>

Password: <blank>

I used to use a different APN (internet2.voicestream.com) on the HD7, but that doesn't seem to work on the DVP. Curious to know what's going on with the data...

Thanks for your help!
[Venue Pro General] murdo119:
If the settings internet2.voicestream.com works on HD7. It should work also on the Dell Venue Pro. I guess you have the grandfathered total internet plan for $19.99. Try changing the apn to the internet2. or call tmobile and have them "reset" your internet connection which includes you taking the battery and sometimes your sim for 1 minute while they are resetting and putting back your battery and sim. I don't know why it doesn't work on epc.tmobile.com settings, but the plan should work on this too. Let me know.
[Venue Pro General] murdo119:
Before i forget, if you are indeed on the grandfathered plan and you paid full price on the venue pro, please refuse any plans that the reps are going to offer. Sometimes they'll tell you that the reason why it doesn't work because you are on the grandfathered plan instead of the smartphone 30 dollars. So far, the grandfathered total internet plan works on every phone except the jet usb sticks which requires you to get the webconnect plan. Hope this helps.
[Venue Pro General] audi09:
I still cant connect to my home wifi. I can connect with other phones/laptop but not with DVP :mad:
[Venue Pro General] ZappiestOyster:
I can confirm this. Just activated a new DVP (16 GB, no contract) and this thing refuses to connect to my secure network at home. I don't want to blame Dell yet because it is possible that I overlooked a setting or two!?
[Venue Pro General] benjaminries:
Dunno. I can connect to secure wifi just fine, but only after I double-checked the password was entered correctly.
[Venue Pro General] Arcarsenal:
For those of you with secure Wi-Fi problems, make sure you double check your password settings. It would be quite the fail is some units out there still can not connect to secure Wi-Fi. My brother and I were sure to test this at the Microsoft Store using my Nexus as a hotspot - I would be furious if this is still an issue.

Do both of you with Wi-Fi problems have 16GB models?
[Venue Pro General] ZappiestOyster:
K. I renege the claim - as mentioned in my original post, I probably missed a setting or two. I started from scratch, double checked the password, and tweaked a couple of settings on the router.

I am happy to report that the WiFi works. God, I can't get over the build quality of this thing... it's amazing!
[Venue Pro General] notebookgrail:
Can anyone confirm if the Bluetooth Audio works (especially in a car which has it built in).?
[Venue Pro General] audi09:
how did you start from scratch and what settings did you tweek? i still cant connect to any wifi, mine or from a coffee shop
[Venue Pro General] ZappiestOyster:
K, hopefully, this will help you and others. Please bear in mind that I have a Netgear router, so these pictures may not apply to other routers.

1) I thought something weird was going on with the phone the first time I attempted to connect to my secure network. It seemed to have gone into this endless loop of trying to connect and failing to connect. So, I turned off the phone (didn't have to reset it) and turned it back on.

2) In my router settings, my 2.4GHz network (802.11g bandwidth) was set to mixed mode for all three bands (b/g/n), as shown in the picture below:

img207.imageshack.us/i/settings2c.png

I changed these settings so that the 802.11 mode is set to only b/g, as shown below. I did this because I wanted the frequencies to match with the specs for the DVP (its WiFi chip is b/g only):

img689.imageshack.us/i/settingsl.png

For those of you who have a Netgear router, you can access these settings from Setup > Wireless Settings > Manual Wireless Network Setup.

3) I also went ahead and changed the password to my WiFi connection, though, I am not sure this is necessary. I guess I'm mentioning this for completeness. Note that if you already attempted to connect to your network, WP7 will keep attempting to connect using the old password. In order to change the settings of a given WiFi network (already added to WP7), you need to tap and hold the network and then go to edit settings. I had to do this to change the password.

4) Connected to my WiFi network - no reboot required.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: Since I don't have 8 posts, this thing won't let me link images. Please copy/paste the ImageShack links manually.
[Venue Pro General] efjay:
@ZappiestOyster: I was about to counter your claim that the DVP doesnt support Wifi N but on checking the Dell site it now only lists wifib/g??!! Is it me or is this a new change, wasnt Wifi N listed previously?
[Venue Pro General] ZappiestOyster:
I believe it has always been WiFi b/g... unless I missed something. I guess you could play around with your router and force the phone on 802.11n and see what happens.