After launching Nokia Lumia 900 for US only, the Finnish company has introduced Nokia Lumia 710, the second Windows 7 Phone for UK. As the second brainchild of the Nokia- Microsoft partnership, Nokia Lumia 710 has a big task at hand. As the budget-friendly option, it aims to entice first time smart phone buyers, while battling the competition. Expected to sell in larger numbers and rake in bigger profits, the smartphone is even more important from a business point of view.
Although Nokia Lumia 710 is not designed to compete with Samsung Galaxy S2 or Apple iPhone 4S but this colorful and affordable smart phone is certainly a good buy. Let us review this new entrant and have a look at its features.
The look
Nokia Lumia 710 offers the best build that can be seen in a smartphone. The Gorilla Glass-shielded front does feel reassuringly solid but the removable back cover doesn’t offer the same strength. The bright side is that you can change these rear plates to customize the color of the phone. But as per going by the costs, it’s more than acceptable. Reasonably slim and light weight, with a standard array of controls, volume control on the right side, a power button up top, the home and search buttons lie under the screen. A nice touch is the dedicated shutter button for the camera.
Display
The scratch resistant Gorilla Glass-fronted 3.7-inch screen with 800 x 480 resolution ClearBlack LCD screen certainly provides deep black colors with a fairly good pixel density.
5MP Camera
A simple, effective auto-focusing 5MP camera with an LED flash, delivers naturally sharp, clean shots even under very dim lighting conditions. The colors are noise free up to a great extent.
Windows Phone
Packed with useful apps like exclusive Nokia Maps, Wi-Fi, GPS, People’s Hub and Xbox Live along with social networking applications like twitter, facebook etc., the phone provides a good user experience although the Windows Phone Marketplace has yet to catch up.
8GB of Storage
Not so massive, but in the pool of budget phones, the 8GB internal storage is decent for an average user. No option for memory expansion is given.
Performance
The Nokia Lumia 710 is high on performance and shows its merit, when compared to the reasonably-priced Android rivals, mainly due to the light weight and responsive WP7.5 OS. Being as powerful as the Lumia 800 with 1.4GHz processor, the phone is never slow or sluggish.
Battery
The battery life is nothing exceptional to talk about but neither is it particularly sparing. With up to 6 h 50 min (2G) / Up to 7 h 40 min (3G) talktime, you might have to recharge the phone everyday if you use your phone aggressively.
Other features to take not of in Nokia 710 are Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support and 1.4GHz Scorpion CPU. There is a GPS receiver with free lifetime voice-guided navigation and GPS support. There is a digital compass included. You will also find a built-in accelerometer and proximity sensor as well as active noise cancellation feature. Enjoy FM Radio with RDS and a standard 3.5 mm audio jack.
The handset is set up with quite a number of third party apps like TeleNav, ESPN, T-Mobile TV, Netflix, GPS Navigator, Nokia Drive, GPS Navigator, Slacker Radio and Weather Channel. Nokia Drive is the most interesting one of these, offering directions and 3D maps. Those maps can be stored on the phone so it will work even in the absence of a data connection.
Nokia Lumia 710 – Pros and cons
Let us now shed some light on the good and the bad of Nokia Lumia 710 to complete the review.
Pros
5 star eco rated
Good quality large display
light in weight
Fast micro processor
4G capable
Interchangeable back covers
Nokia Drive GPS navigation
Cons
No Silverlight support in browser
No HDMI out
Poor battery power
Small application market
No expandable memory
Two manor rivals for Nokia Lumia 710 are HTC Radar and Samsung Omnia W/Focus Flash. The Finnish offering however, has a couple of exclusive software tricks up its sleeve like Nokia drive that are expected to give it a slight competitive edge over its rivals. The Nokia Drive offers free lifetime navigation services to its users.
One should not look upon Nokia Lumia 710 as the poor man’s Lumia 800. As a smashing budget Smartphone, it is definitely much more reliable and faster than the average budget Android phone. Go ahead and poke around the Windows Phone 7 user interface. Of course lack of some standard apps available with competitor operating systems could prove to be a deal breaker. But Nokia has done a incredible job and Nokia Lumia 710 is one of the most affordable and finest smart phones we’ve seen in recent times.