This year is a make-or-break year for the Windows Phone platform.
Other brands were not quite successful with this mobile platform from
Microsoft and it’s now up to Nokia to show them how things are done with
the release of their line of Lumia phones.
The Nokia Lumia 710 sits smack in the middle of the pack of Lumia’s
offering you quality specs at a friendly price suitable for college
students or young professionals. It has the power of the Lumia 800 while
using regular materials found on the Lumia 610, making it a nice
in-betweener smartphone.
Check out our review of the Lumia 710 to see how Nokia tries to
attract new savvy smartphone owners to the Windows Phone platform.
Design
The Nokia Lumia 710 derived its design from the Symbian-toting Nokia
600 with a curved edges on a chunky form that would feel right on your
hands. It’s shell is made of plastic that contributes to its light
weight (125.5g).
The front sports an all Gorilla Glass, fingerprint-magnet screen with
3.7-inch dedicated to its TFT display, and a piece of strip bearing a
button bar for the Back, Home, and Search functionalities that feels a
bit stiff to press. Holding the back button brings up the task screen
which shows you up to five running apps.
The top side belongs to the tiny Power/Sleep button, the 3.5mm audio
jack and the microUSB port for charging and data transfer. Right side
has the volume control and the dedicated camera button. Left and bottom
side are void of any buttons or ports.
The back panel has a smooth rubbery finish for added grip and houses
the 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, and the speaker grill at the
bottom. Prying it open from a catch on the left side reveals a removable
battery and the microSIM slot. Unfortunately, just like any WP7 phones,
no microSD slot can be found here.
Display and UI
The Lumia 710 sports a 3.7-inch (800 x 480 resolution) TFT display
with Nokia’s ClearBlack Technology for deeper blacks, a nice solution
for non-AMOLED displays. Other than the good blacks, the display is just
ordinary for its screen size but the viewing angle is wider than the
usual. I personally like this display for the phone rather than the
over-saturated colors of AMOLED displays.
The phone runs on Windows Phone 7.5 (still Mango) and if you haven’t
seen or used it yet, it’s a really easy UI to learn for first-time
smartphone users. It looks really mice and classy as well. The metro UI
has a boxy look filled with huge text that’s easy on the eyes. Not much
customization can be done with the theme other than changing the colors.
The lockscreen shows basic info aside from time and date such as upcoming calendar events, and unread messages and mails.
The main screen is filled with tiles of apps and features you
commonly use. These tiles are customizable, you can rearrange, delete or
add new shortcuts when you download new apps. And if the app supports
it, you can readily view updates from within its tile.
Swiping to the right of the main screen you will then see every phone
features and apps displayed in a list. A lot of scrolling is required
if you have plenty of apps already although you can also do a search if
needed.
Another nice feature with the UI is the integration of your social network accounts into its basic apps. For example in the People
(or Contacts) app, you can also get a glance of your Facebook wall for
the latest status updates. The Messaging app not only shows your SMS
conversations but also chat threads and friends who are available online
for a chat. The Me tile allows you to quickly post a message, check-in, or set a status update to a number of your registered social network accounts.
Performance
Powering the Nokia Lumia 710 is the same single-core 1.4GHz Qualcomm
Snapdragon processor found on the Nokia Lumia 800 along with 512MB RAM.
It may not be as jaw-dropping as the quad-core phones popping up these
days but believe me, it’s pretty capable in handling all this phone is
set to do without any hiccups.
Whether it’s playing games downloaded from the Marketplace, watching a
video, or just browsing with Internet Explorer, you really won’t notice
any performance issues at all. I downloaded a heavy game, Civilization,
and there was no lag in-game and loading screens didn’t take too long.
Standard HSDPA runs its mobile internet needs although there’s no
option to use the phone as a WiFi hotspot even if this Mango update
already supports it. Speaking of WiFi, it turns itself off when the
phone enters sleep mode and there’s no option to bypass this unless the
phone’s connected to a power source or you set screen timeout to
“never”.
Nokia’s phones are known for having really good reception and call
quality and the Lumia 710 is no different. Same goes with the audio
quality blasting from its above-average speakers.
Web browsing is done via Internet Explorer 9 which is as quick as
mobile browsers can get. Unfortunately, no Flash support here, not even
Microsoft’s Silverlight. But it’s still capable for your regular
browsing needs.
Apps and Features
First thing you do when you get a new smarpthone is to register your
accounts. Being a Windows Phone, the Lumia 710 is heavily integrated to
your Windows Live account which will tie in your Hotmail, Xbox LIVE,
SkyDrive, and MSN Messenger to the phone. You can still however, add
Yahoo! and Google and pull data such as contacts and calendar from those
accounts.
For social networking, only Twitter and LinkedIn are pre-installed in
the phone. Facebook and Foursquare requires a separate download from
the Marketplace and these apps are customized to suit the theme of WP7
which looks really nice and different from iOS and Android.
What you’ll definitely get out of Nokia-based Window Phones are the
added useful Nokia apps that’s already been a staple on their Symbian
devices. You’ll get Nokia Drive and Nokia map for convenient and decent
offline navigation.
Then there are some apps and games available at the Marketplace and
Nokia store so you’ll be getting more than what other WP7 phones has to
offer. Still, app and game listing is not as comprehensive as on the
Android and iOS.
Skype was recently introduced to WP7 and the Lumia 710 can run it
despite not having a front-facing camera. It will utilize the
rear-camera for video-chat instead so only one person can see the other
while Skyp-ing.
SkyDrive is Microsoft’s cloud service and the mobile app (requires
download) is also integrated with the phone’s functions. You can upload
photos straight to your SkyDrive account from the camera or launch and
edit documents into the pre-installed Microsoft Office mobile app.
The Microsoft Office mobile app lets you create or edit Word, Excel
and PowerPoint files and makes sure that everything is retained and
compatible to the desktop version which you can pull from your SkyDrive.
All downloaded games are stored in the Xbox Live tile so you don’t
have to search for it from the app list. All games in the Marketplace
seem to have a trial version so you can check whether it’s worth the
price you’ll be paying.
