Dell Venue 10 7040

[jjwinc]

Thanks to the reviews here (and elsewhere), I took a chance on my next tablet by ordering the Dell Venue 10 7040. It should be here by Wednesday. Even though it doesn't have its own forum yet, I'll post first impressions if anyone is interested.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! It's always good to get those kinds of impressions here. Someone is bound to find it useful!

 

[jjwinc]

Thank you, B. I'm a long-time lurker, but it's time for me to jump into the mix.

 

[lostboardmayhem]

I felt the same way and ordered a Dell Venue 10 7000 on Friday, I am very excited! After reading the "Second Look" at the Venue 8 article on Saturday I feel even more confident that the Venue 10 will have been worth the price.

 

[omegafiler]

I've been using my Dell Venue 10 7000 for about a week now and I actually like it. At nearly 2.5lb with the keyboard, it's rather heavy for it's size. The keyboard is plastic, but the tablet itself feels like a solid piece of aluminum or something. So I can understand the weight. It's solid! And yeah, it's a bit pricey, but we all know Dell has coupons to bring it down a bit.

Otherwise, love the OLED display. Once you go to an OLED screen, you'll never be able to use a normal LCD/IPS/TFT display again. The resolution, clarity, contrast, black levels, brightness, all amazing. Speakers, seriously... LOUD. Almost expect to have some bass, but then you have to remember it is a tablet. No bass here.

It's close to stock android, so things are pretty darn smooth. Virtually no lag, and what little was there, was resolved by changing the background. It moves around with the display, kind of a 3D effect. Nifty, but a tad buggy. So really digging the light OS. What little bloat is installed can mostly be removed too, that helps.

Other minor issue is lack of adjustment for touchpad, so no palmrest rejection. I've gotten used to not resting on the palmrest. Working great as I'm obviously typing this on the keyboard. Speaking of which, works very well for being on the small and compact side of things.

Was also concerned about battery life, but it's held up surprisingly well. Unless you start doing something that really pushes the CPU like a high-end 3D game. Otherwise its easily lasting 2-3 days with light to moderate use. Keeping in mind I don't use it all day like my phone. Still wish the battery were bigger for heavy use days... hasn't been an issue yet though.

But yeah, pretty happy with it. Not perfect. Although after having owned a LOT of tablets, nothing is. So it'll do.

Sent from my Venue 10 7040 using Tapatalk

 

[lostboardmayhem]

Omegafiler,

Did you have any problems with the keyboard connection? If mine connects it only lasts for a minute and then none of the keys or mouse work, very frustrating.

edit: It appears to only happen when I use certain apps like Chrome and Microsoft Remote Desktop which I was hoping to use. I thought it would have the RAM to do it so I'm not sure why, oh well I guess.

 

[omegafiler]

No connection issues with any apps, including those; seems to be rather stable. It gets power from the tablet, so it always reconnects when it turns on. I also had two, the first one had a "1" key that wouldn't always work. Both still connected.

If you haven't already, I'd remove and pair again via the Bluetooth menu. Had to do that with the new one as it didn't quite "stick" the first time. It also seems to automatically go into pairing mode when I removed it.

 

[lostboardmayhem]

I have removed it and paired it many times. It fails to connect most of the time if it was kicked off during one of those apps until I clear the Bluetooth cache and restart the tablet. I even did a factory reset and no luck so I guess I will have to send it back. Thanks for telling me that you have not had the same problem.

 

[omegafiler]

I have removed it and paired it many times. It fails to connect most of the time if it was kicked off during one of those apps until I clear the Bluetooth cache and restart the tablet. I even did a factory reset and no luck so I guess I will have to send it back. Thanks for telling me that you have not had the same problem.

No problem, that is odd though. Good luck.

Sent from my Venue 10 7040 using Tapatalk

 

[B. Diddy]

Moved to the new Venue 10 forum.

 

[lostboardmayhem]

Interestingly after my last post the keyboard has done fantastic and I am even using it right now, I guess there was something going on in the background and I was excited enough not to have patients. If it happens again though I will contact Dell but hopefully it was just something I did for the first day.

 

[omegafiler]

Interestingly after my last post the keyboard has done fantastic and I am even using it right now, I guess there was something going on in the background and I was excited enough not to have patients. If it happens again though I will contact Dell but hopefully it was just something I did for the first day.

Sweet. Also, got our own forum. Nice.

 

[jjwinc]

I've noticed something with the keyboard. When you're using the stock, Google (on-screen) keyboard as the default, and you attach the Dell keyboard, the switch is automatically made. Some would take this for granted, but with my other tablet / BT keyboard, I would have two keyboards (on screen and BT) up at the same time. I would consistently have to minimize the one on-screen. I solved this by downloading a "null keyboard" app to detect BT, so it would shut off the on-screen.

Back to the Venue 10 - I never really liked the stock KB that came with Android, I use Swiftkey. When I have that loaded, I now see the prediction bar at the bottom of the screen when I'm typing on the Dell KB. Additionally, I've had two lockups so far when using Swiftkey and the Dell KB. One while using Chrome, the other with Duolingo. I switched back to stock OSKB, no problems since.

Long story short, if you have third party keyboard apps loaded, you may want to give that a try to see if it helps.

 

[lostboardmayhem]

jjwinc,
I installed the new version of SwiftKey the other day after the update and that annoying prediction bar is gone now. I have also have not had any crashes with with Chrome or anything from the keyboard conflicts. I understand how you feel though because I an not a real fan of the stock keyboard either.

 

[omegafiler]

I guess I've gotten used to the stock keyboard. Of course with the keyboard dock, it honestly doesn't get used much.

Although it does keep prompting me in the status bar to select the keyboard input...

 

[Wildo6882]

So I just lucked into one of these and I'll be firing it up pretty soon. I purchased the 8" and had some dead pixels, so they agreed to do a replacement. Then, I get this email from Dell asking me if the 10" would be an ok replacement as they didn't have any of the 8" available to ship to me that day. Of course I said yes. Then to my surprise when it showed up today, it was the 32gb version with the keyboard included! I only paid $370-ish for the 8 and wasn't charged anything extra for the 10. I couldn't believe it!

Glad to see you guys seem to like it. It'll mostly be an entertainment device and a travel companion, so this looks to fit the bill pretty nicely.

 

[lostboardmayhem]

So I just lucked into one of these and I'll be firing it up pretty soon. I purchased the 8" and had some dead pixels, so they agreed to do a replacement. Then, I get this email from Dell asking me if the 10" would be an ok replacement as they didn't have any of the 8" available to ship to me that day. Of course I said yes. Then to my surprise when it showed up today, it was the 32gb version with the keyboard included! I only paid $370-ish for the 8 and wasn't charged anything extra for the 10. I couldn't believe it!

Glad to see you guys seem to like it. It'll mostly be an entertainment device and a travel companion, so this looks to fit the bill pretty nicely.

Sounds like a great deal, the price was the only part that made ordering one so tough for me. My keyboard continued having problems like I stated before so I actually just got a new tablet in the mail last week but it fixed everything. Very happy with the Venue 10 so I hope you are too.

Sent from my Venue 10 7040 using Tapatalk

 

[kasplash]

I got my Dell Venue 10 7040 a few days ago. In General, I Iike it a lot, BUT there is one big problem. Android 5 has a "cast screen" feature that is one of my primary reasons for using Android devices. It works perfectly on my Nexus 5 phone, but NOT on this Dell tablet. It says "no devices detected" while there are 3 Chromecast devices in the house. The Chromecast app can see them, Youtube, Netflix, Pandora, and HBOGo can see them and cast to them just fine. But Google Photos and Chrome browser... no way to cast them to the Big Screen!

I suspect that there is a conflict with the Dellcast app. Dellcast of course wants me to buy Dellcast adapters... Dellcast app cannot see the Chromecast devices either. This will be a deal breaker if I can't find a solution.

 

[lostboardmayhem]

I got my Dell Venue 10 7040 a few days ago. In General, I Iike it a lot, BUT there is one big problem. Android 5 has a "cast screen" feature that is one of my primary reasons for using Android devices. It works perfectly on my Nexus 5 phone, but NOT on this Dell tablet. It says "no devices detected" while there are 3 Chromecast devices in the house. The Chromecast app can see them, Youtube, Netflix, Pandora, and HBOGo can see them and cast to them just fine. But Google Photos and Chrome browser... no way to cast them to the Big Screen!

I suspect that there is a conflict with the Dellcast app. Dellcast of course wants me to buy Dellcast adapters... Dellcast app cannot see the Chromecast devices either. This will be a deal breaker if I can't find a solution.

I think casting an entire screen is rather limited on which devices Chromecast actually supports. They originally only supported a couple of Nexus/GPe devices and when they opened it up to all devices they warned that it will not work or be supported on everything. You can try other gallery apps that support Chromecast but I don't know of a browser that does.

Sent from my Venue 10 7040 using Tapatalk

 

[omegafiler]

I got my Dell Venue 10 7040 a few days ago. In General, I Iike it a lot, BUT there is one big problem. Android 5 has a "cast screen" feature that is one of my primary reasons for using Android devices. It works perfectly on my Nexus 5 phone, but NOT on this Dell tablet. It says "no devices detected" while there are 3 Chromecast devices in the house. The Chromecast app can see them, Youtube, Netflix, Pandora, and HBOGo can see them and cast to them just fine. But Google Photos and Chrome browser... no way to cast them to the Big Screen!

I suspect that there is a conflict with the Dellcast app. Dellcast of course wants me to buy Dellcast adapters... Dellcast app cannot see the Chromecast devices either. This will be a deal breaker if I can't find a solution.

I've got a Chromecast, but never tried much beyond YouTube. After seeing your post I just tried today and it's working great. Although 5.1 was just installed a few minutes ago. So that might have something to do with it.

In either case, I tried several apps including Chrome using the "Cast Screen" feature in the Chromecast app and they all seem to be working just fine.