Dell Venue Pro arriving in the UK at long last: £459 off contract, shipping in 10 days

Time for a quick memory check: remember the WP7  slider that Dell announced some months ago? That's right, it's the Venue Pro -- the one that's been struggling to meet demand in the US due to some mysterious reworking. Well, here's some good news for the folks on the other side of the pond: starting today, Dell's UK store is taking orders for this unlocked slider for a hefty £459 ($745), and the first deliveries are expected to arrive in 10 days. Man, these wicked people from Round Rock sure love making us wait, but better late than never, right?

Dell's 2011 smartphone and tablet lineup has been leaked: Android Ice Cream, WP7 sliders, and a slate running WindWindows 8

Wrigley, Hancock, Millennium, Gallo, Sterling, Rosemount, Silver Oak, Peju and Opus One. What are we rattling off? Oh, just the list of codenames from one of the largest leaks we've ever seen out of Dell.WPCentral and Android Central got their hands on alleged smartphone and tablet roadmaps for the entire year, detailing the company's plans for devices running operating systems that have yet to be formally announced, including Android Ice Cream (yes, Ice Cream!) and Windows 8 as well as the tablet-friendly Honeycomb. Here's the full rundown.

Smartphones:

• Things look pretty boring (and by boring, we mean beautifully curvy) until approximately mid-April of this year, when the Venue Pro gets some "additional features and enhancements" which we're pretty sure we can name.

• Then, Q3 brings the Wrigley, what looks like a vertical QWERTY slider identifying itself as "Windows Phone 7 Next Gen," and sporting a 1GHz CPU, 4-inch 800 x 480 screen, and a 8 megapixel camera with 720p video recording. Nothing out of the ordinary, as far as we know.

• By September, things should get very interesting as Android Ice Cream will apparently be out, and Dell's Hancock will scoop it onto a a 4-inch qHD screen with dual cameras, dual-core processing and 1080p recording.

• Starting Q4, would-be Hancock buyers will have a dual-core multimedia slate alternative, as the Millennium drops the keyboard for a larger 4.3-inch screen and DLNA support (though the front-facing camera is limited to VGA resolution.)

Tablets:

• Dell's Streak 10 won't keep us waiting for long: come April, the Gallo will reportedly be chomping away at some tasty Honeycomb. But that's not all -- Dell lists a handwriting update for the Gallo in October or thereabouts. There's also a Streak 7 update scheduled for July -- we imagine that's the point when Dell believes it can shoehorn Android 3.0 onto its older brother.

• Meanwhile, Dell's 10-inch Windows 7 slate, internally known as Rosemount, is slated for June, with a 1366 x 768 resolution that should allow for native playback of 720p video.

• We can't tell you what the Sterling is, but it's likely a mid-sized one, as it's slated to take over the Streak 7's duties in or about October with Android Honeycomb on board.

• Finally, come CES 2012 in January, we now expect Dell to drop three new tablets at once: theOpus One and Silver Oak running Android Honeycomb, and the Peju with Windows 8. (The Streak 10 / Gallo will apparently soldier on.) Numbers on the left of the charge suggest that the Opus will be small, the Silver Oak mid-sized, and the Peju large.

As noted at the head of the slide, all details here are subject to change, but we're sure as heck a lot more confident that Dell plans to do something with all those tacky mockups. One more chart after the break! 

Dell Latitude XT3 Convertible Tablet now on the Way

Dell's announcement of two 10-inch tabletsat the Dell Means Business event wasn't the only tablet news to come out of SanFrancisco: also included in the 39-product rollout that the company unveiled was the Latitude XT3 convertible.

As a 13-inch notebook, the XT3 is a larger notebook than its predecessor, the Latitude XT2, which was lighter and sported a much sleeker frame. Though it sacrifices slimness and portability, however, the 13-inch screen on the XT3 offers users much more real estate on which to take notes, review documents, etc.

The particular build of the XT3 is also good news for IT folks, who will find that it has the same case and uses many of the same components as the standard Latitude E6000 series notebooks, creating less hassle when technicians need to replace any of its parts.

Another similar design feature to the Latitude notebooks is docking connector that is built into the base of the bottom of the XT3, allowing it to jack in to standard Latitude docks.

In a bit of bad news, however, users who weren't fans of the digitizer for the Latitude XT2 will be unhappy to hear that the N-Trig will be making a return. Supposedly, Dell has worked with customer complaints and feedback to try to ameliorate the issues with the notoriously problematic N-Trig digitizer, but whether or not there has been much of an improvement has yet to be seen.

Dell has remained silent about the pricing and availability details of the XT3, but given that Dell already has test units available, we can probably expect to see it within the next few months.