With all the fuss surrounding the Nokia Lumia 800 and the recently unveiled Nokia Lumia 900 creating a stir at CES 2012, many of you may have forgotten the other Lumia – the 710. Nokia received its fair share of criticism regarding the price of the Lumia 800, but let's face it - a phone with that kind of build, AMOLED display and an 8-megger camera will carry a weighty price tag. But Nokia being Nokia will always have a mid-range option and those curious to try a Windows phone at an affordable price might find the Lumia 710 an attractive option. So how does the Nokia Lumia 710 fare against its big brother?
First look
The Lumia 710 harks back to Nokia's past in terms of design and looks much like the old 603. The 3.7-inch display, curved edges, plastic back panel and physical buttons still manage to look good, but don't really give the feel of a premium handset. Unlike the Lumia 800, the 710 doesn't come with a unibody polycarbonate structure, so you can detach the back panel to reveal the 1,300 maH Li-ion battery and micro SIM card slot. The device comes with 8GB of onboard storage but unfortunately no micro SD card slot, a feature that was lacking even in the Lumia 800. The back panel comes in a range of colours like Cyan, Black, White, Yellow and Fuschia and you can interchange them to suit your mood. I had the lighter Cyan (blue) unit but I found that it attracted smudges easily and therefore tended to look discoloured after just a few days of use. You can choose a phone with either a white or black front panel depending on your choice.
There are a bunch of physical buttons on the phone which include a power button, volume toggle switch, camera shutter button and the staple Windows control buttons at the bottom for Back, Home and Search. The Windows controls are physical buttons and are a welcome change from the staple capacitive buttons you see on most smartphones; I can't say the same about the other buttons though which were flimsy and unresponsive.
The Lumia 710 has a rear 5-meg camera with LED flash but lacks a front camera, also a feature missing in the Lumia 800. This phone charges through the micro USB slot so you won't be able to use your thin-pin Nokia charger for it.
User interface
Don't expect a stunning AMOLED display on the Lumia 710 but at least Nokia has used its ClearBlack technology (which improves contrast ratios making blacks look blacker) and covered the screen with Corning Gorilla Glass to protect it from scratches. The 480x800 display is nowhere as brilliant as the one on the Lumia 800, but it does a pretty good job of showing off Windows Mango's colourful tile interface. Viewing angles were quite standard, but the screen did tend to look a bit faded when tilted. The screen doesn't do too well in bright sunlight either.
Inside, the user experience is almost identical to the Lumia 800. Windows Mango doesn't leave too much room for customisation, however, you do get the same Contacts Transfer app, Nokia Drive (the company's voice guided Navigation system), Nokia Maps and TuneIn Radio. You can read about these in detail in my Lumia 800 review .
Performance
The innards of the Lumia 710 are also identical to the Lumia 800 – a 1.4GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 chipset with 512MB RAM and Adreno 205 graphics. These specs seem to be the norm on most Windows handsets. The phone didn't hang or slow down with heavy usage but I did find that the proximity sensor malfunctioned occasionally (a big problem I faced with Symbian handsets like Nokia E6, E7 and N8) which is really annoying and can make or break your opinion of a phone. Otherwise the touchscreen was very responsive, supporting scrolling and pinch-to-zoom with ease. Call quality was good with volume and clarity coming through even in noisy environments. There were a few instances where calls dropped but not enough to make it a problem.
The 1,300 maH battery is a bit of a stepdown from the Lumia 800's 1,450 maH battery but it sufficed for a day of usage which included Facebook and Twitter updates turned on, push mail activated for two email accounts, a couple of hours of talktime and some browsing, texting and Whatsapp usage.
Our verdict
For the vast difference in price from the Lumia 800, there's not much you have to compromise on with the Lumia 710. Performance and interface were pretty much on par with the only downgrades – if you can call them that – being build, screen size and screen resolution. If you're looking for a first smartphone or a mid-range Windows phone, the Lumia 710 strikes the perfect balance.
Love: Funky looks, good specs
Hate: Average screen, no front camera
Rs 15,999