New Dell Venue Pro Firmware Revision Coming Next Month

I know many Dell Venue Pro users have reported issues with connecting or using Wi-Fi and with lockups. Take a look at sites like XDAdevelopers.com and PocketNow.com or just spend some time reading through the #dellvenuepro hashtag to see what I’m referring to.

The new firmware will be rolled out to customers with unlocked phones globally and to T-Mobile customers in the US around the middle of next month. This will be via the Zune update process. Beginning this week, customers who order the unlocked version of the Dell Venue Pro will receive the phone with version 2.12 of the firmware installed.

The main fix in the updated firmware is that it addresses the Wi-Fi and lockup issues. Here’s what was going on: the Wi-Fi and the user memory storage area both use the same DMA channel. So, if you downloaded a lot of data via Wi-Fi (like a game or other Marketpace app, or even a YouTube video) while the phone was trying to write to the user memory storage location, you sometimes see lockups due to a DMA conflict. In other words, lockups could occur when Wi-Fi data downloading conflicted with writing to the user memory storage location.

Over the past months, we had released previous firmware revisions like 2.06 and 2.10. The reality was that those interim firmware updates solved issues for some customers, but it did not solve all of them. As we gathered data from the other versions, we got more detail to come up with the new firmware revision. Testing-wise, we’ve been working with Microsoft, the carriers and even a few beta test customers like Malcolm Williams (@domineus on Twitter). Based on those tests, things are looking pretty good. Thanks to those of you who served as beta testers (@efjay01, Jesse Jewkes, @notebookgrail and others) and to all of you who have been waiting for this update. Check out Malcolm’s deep dive on the beta test on WMPoweruser.com for more information.

Like I mentioned before, existing global customers and T-Mobile customers will see this update beginning around mid-July . It does require the Microsoft March update and the security update, so if you’ like to get a jump on the process, I recommend that you install those now. When we get closer to the time of the update, I’ll blog about the process to walk you through it like I did for the March update.

To those of you who have been waiting for a fix to this and other issues, we appreciate your support. When I have new information to share on this topic, I’ll do it here. If you have questions or thoughts, feel free to leave a comment on this post, or ping me on Twitter ( @LionelatDell), or just check the #dellvenuepro Twitter hashtag from time to time.

About the Author: Lionel Menchaca