Once upon a time Dell used to made a fantastic lineup of personal digital assistants (PDAs) called the Axim. Dell proved with each new generation of Axim devices that there were competent enough to create outstanding hardware. What happened to the people behind Axim is a story no one really knows, but there was a large chunk of time between the launch of the last Axim (September 2005) and the first Dell branded smartphone came out; the Venue Pro. That device came out last month, but we’ve yet to see it on any store shelves. It comes with Windows Phone 7 and is one of the few devices on the market that can be classified as a “portrait slider”. If you’ve seen the Palm Pre, then you know what I’m talking about.
Now enter the Dell Venue, which looks exactly like the Venue Pro, except the keyboard is gone, and the operating system has changed. One manufacturer shouldn’t hedge all their bets on one particular smartphone platform over the other, and as we’ve seen with Samsung, HTC, and LG, creating a portfolio of devices with both Windows Phone 7 and Google’s Android covers most of the market and reduces risk. The Venue comes with Android 2.2, has a 4.1 inch screen coated with Gorilla Glass, 8 megapixel camera, and it packs the same 1 GHz Snapdragon processor that gets shoved into nearly every Android device that hits the market. Price and launch date? That information wasn’t provided, but Dell did say it’ll be sold unlocked.
Does Dell have what it takes to turn themselves into one of the best smartphone makers in the world? Maybe, but it isn’t going to happen overnight, and we’re not so sure that trying to create a fancy skin on top of someone else’s operating system is the right way of going about things. If we had a say, we’d tell the Dell folks to focus on quality materials, timely OS updates, and to try and crack the enterprise market which they’ve been so happily selling machines to since as far back as I can remember.