Bad Venue Pro! Bad! Naughty! It looks like Dell’s rebellious son, the WinPho7 powered Venue Pro, has again decided to turn against those that only want to bring it love; this time, its issue is with the humble SIM card.
After launching exclusively in Microsoft stores, the first batch of Venue Pros decided to pull a dirty on secure WiFi networks. The issue was a hardware one, forcing Microsoft to allow customers to return the unit for a fresh one.
This delayed Dell’s launch of the device, but — last Friday — they said that they were ramping up production in anticipation of a big launch.
Well, it looks like Dell’s firstborn (for WinPho7, at least) has chucked another tantrum, with users (and store-owners) complaining that they aren’t playing nice with SIM cards… which are kinda vital for day-to-day use.
In an email to T-mo news, Dan Seiden explains his experience after returning his engineering sample to a Microsoft store:
Just wanted to drop a note to you.. I got a call about replacing my Engineering Sample Dell Venue Pro over the weekend. I had not been having to many issues with mine but they had replacement units in and I went down to the Microsoft store. After getting there they exchanged my phone and I thought I was going to be happy with a newer unit that seems to have a slightly better build. Popped my SIM card in there and was faced with a SIM card error message. Having lots of phones I figured the card was not seated and opened it up and reseated it. Well to make a long story short.. I tried three different SIM cards in two other units and none of them would take the card. Getting home and looking over the forums it seems this was happening with all the units that had gone out. Seems like someone at Dell is going to be getting fired..
Dan later heard from the Microsoft store that all but one of the new batch of Venue Pros were unable to read SIMs.
This does not bode well for the unit, nor Dell. It is for reasons like this that Dell (and other companies) refuse to give dates for hardware launches.
Needless to say, expect to wait a little while before it launches through T-mobile.