Dell admits Venue Pro faults

Dell has been scrambling to address battery and Wi-Fi issues discovered in its new Windows Phone 7 device and has promised to offer replacements to affected customers.

Bloggers across the web had complained about picking up Dell Venue Pro phones to find they contained batteries labelled as "Engineering Samples."

"We have addressed and corrected the oversight and are working with our partners at Microsoft to replace Venue Pro units to ensure people are 100 per cent satisfied with their purchase," the company said on the Direct2Dell blog.

"These are production quality batteries but were simply mislabelled."

Perhaps more concerning were the Wi-Fi issues. Dell admitted a software glitch during the manufacturing process had led to problems connecting some Venue Pros to protected Wi-Fi networks.

"The issue affected some of our initial phone shipments and was not a hardware issue or a Windows Phone 7 one," the company added.

The problem is currently limited to the US, but it is not a good start for one of the first Windows Phone 7 devices.

Dell's Venue Pro was expected to be released in the UK before the end of this year, but there are rumours it will now not hit the shelves in this country until 2011.

The faults will do nothing to help Dell make a big splash in the smartphone segment, which has been booming over the past year.

A Gartner report this month showed smartphone sales increased 96 per cent in the third quarter, when compared to the same period last year.