Dell Venue Pro WinPho 7 smartphone

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Under the hood you get all the modern smartphone goodies including 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, a 1GHz CPU with 512MB of Ram and a 5Mp camera. Storage is limited to 8GB but unlike the Android horde there is no DIY MicroSD expansion. The Venue's 480 x 800 screen is a cracker. At 4.1in it's the second largest available on a WinMo handset after the HTC HD7 and the AMOLED panel is bright and lustrous. It also has a robust viewing angle – only slightly hampered by the curved screen – and good daylight visibility.

Build quality is top notch and it shows

This is the first time I have used a Windows Phone 7 handset in anger and while it won't lure me away from Android anytime soon it's not without its good points and for anyone new to this smartphone malarkey it's certainly worth a look.
 The UI is consistently fast and very fluid and the live tile design is appealing to look at and easy to master. Web browsing is every bit as satisfying as it is on the likes of an iPhone 4 or Desire HD, helped by the very fast page rendering and excellent multi-touch reactions.

It's not all rosy though. At the time of writing WP7 still doesn't support Flash video, though rumour has it that a future update will fix this and bring copy-and-paste too. More serious failings in my eyes are the absence of USB tethering and drag'n'drop content transfer – I'd no more buy a phone that ties me to Zune than I would one that ties me to iTunes.

Dell has added nothing to the WinMo7 stew – so there is no equivalent of the HTC Hub that appears on the company’s new Windows phones – but that's not to say the Venue is short on software. The Office suite and Xbox Live gaming features alone will attract some buyers and the People Hub social network aggregation systems work well.

If you do want to add some spice there are now over 7,000 apps in the WP7 Marketplace and the number is rising fast. Agreed, that is a tiny number compared to the Android and Apple markets but the Marketplace already has many of the important bases covered – a Kindle app for the platform appeared recently. One thing the Marketplace is short on is satnav apps but as with Flash 10.1, the scuttlebutt has it that free turn-by-turn navigation is soon to be added to Bing Maps on WP7.