Nokia Lumia 710

Nokia's Lumia 710 is a budget follow-up to its first Windows Phone 7 handset, the Nokia Lumia 800.

It's very slightly larger than the 800 in all dimensions, has the same Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) operating system and 3.7in 480x800 display, but the screen is TFT rather than AMOLED, the camera is a 5 rather than 8-megapixel version and it has 8GB rather than 16GB of storage. The 1.4GHz single-core processor is identical.
Nokia Lumia 710
The phone feels very well built, with a classy edge-to-edge glass fascia and a colourful backplate. Windows Phone 7 Mango brings numerous improvements to the original, including smartphone staples such as multi-tasking and copy and paste. It feels really responsive in everyday use, much more so than the Android interface, and it's attractive and slick. You can add multiple Windows Live accounts, as well as Gmail and Exchange. We're particularly fond of the email client, which is one of the only mobile clients we've seen with an unread message view, but the calendar isn’t brilliant - entries in the month view are too small to view so you have to zoom into the day, and there's no week view.
Nokia Lumia 710
Web browsing using Internet Explorer is fast. Double-tapping a page zooms in to a more readable level than the default zoom. In our side-by-side tests, however, we didn't notice much of a speed difference between the two browsers.
Since its launch, the Windows Phone Marketplace has expanded to over 60,000 apps. It may not have as many apps as its rivals, but the quality has improved greatly since our last visit, with some bigger names visible such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Spotify. Sadly, some of these apps aren't highly rated, and some, such as Microsoft's YouTube app, are simply shortcuts to a mobile version of a web site.
Microsoft software handles most of the 710's main tasks: Xbox Live for games, Zune for music and videos and Office for business files. Nokia has included its Drive satnav app, and there's also a link to download Nokia Maps from the Marketplace, but we don’t think Nokia Maps offers much over Windows Phone 7's own Bing Maps. And at the same time Nokia city lens is the greatest map application ever than any other maps provided by the rivals.
Nokia has integrated its music service, which works reasonably well. The Music app lets you log into your Nokia Music account - a boon for those who've previously bought a Nokia phone and acquired music that can only be played on Nokia devices. The Music app's Mix Radio function is worth a look - it's a collection of pre-defined playlists designed to introduce you to artists on Nokia's roster, and it's easy to download individual songs that tickle your fancy. The track listings veer towards the popular, but there are some good tunes on there and you can save a playlist for offline playback.
To transfer music and videos to the phone and to get your photos off, you need to use the Zune desktop software. This is a reasonable media player and interface, but we weren't particularly keen on having to use it - we prefer just dragging and dropping files in Windows Explorer, as you can with an Android phone.
Hardware-wise, the Lumia 710 is an excellent phone. It feels just the right size and shape and feels well made. There's a dedicated camera shutter button, and we liked the physical Back, Home and Search buttons. Our only real gripe is the top-mounted power button which you need to unlock the screen; we prefer the Lumia 800's side-mounted model.
Nokia Lumia 710
The Lumia 710's 3.7in screen looks sharp, and colour and contrast are great - Nokia's ClearBlack technology works well with Windows Phone 7's primary colours, and the screen is very bright. It's not up there with the Lumia 800's OLED display, though - blacks aren't as deep and viewing angles aren't as wide. The touch interface is smooth and responsive, although it lacks an oleophobic coating to stop fingerprints smudging.
Nokia Lumia 710
The camera takes good shots, although under fluorescent lighting it picked up a bit of chroma noise. Images were crisp and had natural colours, and the LED flash works well to illuminate dark areas. Videos share the same good image quality, but movement was jerky and focus seemed to jump about in video mode. It's not up there with the Lumia 800's camera.
Nokia Lumia 710
It's worth pointing out that despite a total of 8GB storage, you only have about 4GB free to store your own apps, photos, videos and music, and there's no memory card slot for expansion. You can use the free 25GB of cloud storage you get with Microsoft's SkyDrive, but then downloads will cut into your data plan. Battery life is also disappointing: in our video playback test, the Lumia 710 only lasted for four hours and 19 minutes, compared to 5h 48m from the Lumia 800; we've yet to see a Windows Phone 7 handset with particularly impressive battery life.
There's no doubt the Lumia 710 is a slick, powerful and well-designed phone. Windows Phone 7's app selection may have some catching up to do, but it's still a great operating system, so if you're willing to take the plunge this fun, chunky handset is a good way to go about it. The Nokia Lumia 800 has more storage space and a better camera and screen, and is only around £5 a month more expensive on a similar contract, though.

Details

Part CodeNOKIAL710BCUK
Review Date11 Feb 2012
PriceRs.13,300 approximately
Rating**** stars out of 5

Hardware

Main display size3.7in
Native resolution480x800
CCD effective megapixels5-megapixel
FlashLED
Video recording formatMP4
ConnectivityBluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB
GPSyes
Internal memory8192MB
Memory card supportnone
Memory card includedN/A
Operating frequenciesGSM 900/1800/1900, 3G 900/1900/2100
Wireless dataEDGE, HSPA, WCDMA
Size119x62x13mm
Weight126g

Features

Operating systemWindows Phone 7 7.5 Mango
Microsoft Office compatibilityWord/Excel/PowerPoint/OneNote editors
Email clientPOP3/IMAP/Exchange
Audio format supportAAC, AAC+, eAAC, eAAC+, MP3, MP4, WAV, WMA, AMR
Video playback formatsMPEG4, H.264, H.263, WMV9, ASF, AVI
FM Radioyes
Web BrowserInternet Explorer 9 Mobile
Accessoriesheadset, USB data cable, mains adapter
Talk time6.9 hours
Standby time16.7 days

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