There is no plane flying with Lumia 710 written on its belly. There are no taxis branded with Lumia 710. Yet, this could be the Windows Phone 7 (WP7) device that brings moolah to Nokia. At least in Indian market. When it launched several weeks ago, it would have been a tough sell. But market has shifted a bit in the last one month and Lumia 710 has got a price cut. We put it through our grinding test to see if it merits your attention.
Plasticky but not cheap
Unlike Lumia 800, that sports a slim polycarbonate unibody design, Lumia 710 is an average looking phone. Made of plastic, it has a colourful and replaceable battery cover, three physical keys - back, home and search - that are, thankfully, back-lit, and a design that is, compared to that of Lumia 800, more conventional with its rounded edges.
Yet, in typical Nokia fashion, the phone is put together very well. The volume keys are little stiff and camera key too small, but the phone feels good in hand. It also looks good, mostly because Nokia has used plastic with matte finish on back cover and not the glossy-type often common on cheap Android phones.
Lumia 710 uses the same core hardware that powers its more expensive sibling. This means, it has a 1.4Ghz processor, 512 MB RAM and an Adreno 205 GPU. Unlike Lumia 800, which has 16GB storage, this phone has just 8GB storage. This may be a problem for those who love to store their full music library on phones. As it is with all other Windows phones, there is no option to expand it through micro SD card.
The phone has only one camera - the primary one - that can shoot pictures in 5 mega pixels or videos in up to 720P resolution. There is an LED flash for low-light photography. There is no front camera. This is not a problem at the moment. But whenever Skype comes to Windows Phone 7 platform, Lumia users may feel left out.
Slick, fast and pretty useful
With powerful hardware powering the phone, Lumia 710 is a fast phone. There is no lag in UI overall the device feels very responsive. It also helps that WP7 is pretty slick and smooth operating software that utilizes the available hardware to its fullest due to tight hardware and software integration.
Talking of WP7, it's little different from the other mobile operating software. Instead of using an icon-based user interface (UI), WP7 utilizes tiles. Some of these tiles, like Me or Pictures, are live tiles. This means they can refresh information in real time and show it to user. In this way, they are a cross between the static icons of iOS and dynamic widgets of Android.
Microsoft calls the interface in WP7 Metro. It has a layered UI, utilizing clean straight lines. To access various features or navigate, users require lot of horizontal swiping, which feels very natural and intuitive on touchscreen.
In the beginning, you may find the OS a little confusing. Some options are available only with long press. And on some occasions, you may find the OS is too basic as there are few power options. One example is screen brightness setting. You can only select low, medium or high. Low is too dull and high and medium are too bright. Auto brightness is also too dull, most likely to save battery.
But overall, WP7 is head and shoulders above the operating software that power Blackberry Phones or Nokia's Symbian phones. Email app is fantastic. Keyboard is very good. Twitter and Facebook are natively integrated and make for decent social media experience. Support for Office documents is also good. Though to make full use of it, you have to be a real workaholic, who can't part with his office files even for a minute.
WP7 relies on Zune for syncing files between the phone and computer. There is no mass storage mode, and if you like to drag-and-drop your files you may not like Zune too much.
Multitasking, though not as functional as what found on Android, gets the job done for most users. Similarly, the number and quality of apps doesn't match what a user gets on Android or iOS but for most people it may not be of much concern.
Talking of apps, there are two special ones that give Lumia 710 an edge over other Windows phones. The phone comes with Nokia Drive, an app that offers voice-based turn-by-turn navigation, and Nokia Maps. Both are class-leading applications, matching and at times even surpassing Google Maps that is available on Android platform. Nokia Drive and Nokia Maps are especially significant because WP7 relies on Bing Maps, which is almost useless in India.
The 480x800 pixels screen on Lumia 710 is average. Colours are decent for a LSD screen but lack the vibrancy and good viewing angles of AMOLED screen found on similarly priced Samsung Omnia W phone. Camera is very poor. Nokia is known for putting good cameras in its phones but with Lumia range it seems to have faltered. Pictures and videos shot with Lumia 710 neither display good and accurate colours nor have the level of detail that we expect from a 5 mega pixel smartphone camera.
Battery life is average on Lumia 710. When used for calls, messaging, lots of Twitter, some photography, occasional gaming and browsing, the phone lasted around 10 hours.
Worth its price
With all gadgets, it all boils down to this: is it worth the price, considering everything else that is available in the market? In the case of Lumia 710, we can say yes.
Lumia 710 is currently available for around Rs 15,000 in the market, almost Rs 5000 less than the MRP at which it had gone for sale several weeks ago. This is the price point that Android manufacturers have long ignored. They have focused mostly on high-end and around Rs 20,000. Currently, at Rs 15,000 price point there is only one phone - Samsung Omnia W - that can be termed direct competitor to Lumia 710.
Omnia W, like Lumia 710, is a WP7 device. Both are very good phones. Omnia W has slightly better camera and a lot better screen. But Lumia 710 has Nokia Drive and Nokia Maps, making it a more functional device in day-to-day use if you use navigation or GPS-based services. You choice here should depend on what you value more. A better screen or a service like Nokia Drive.
If we see Lumia 710 in terms of competition from Android, there are a couple of handsets that merit mention. Though, on average they cost at least Rs 1000 more. First one is Motorola Defy+ and the second is Xperia Neo V.
At the moment, Android has some advantage over WP7. It has better and more apps and hence is more functional, offers lot more flexibility, is customizable, has a better web browsers, has support for mass storage and micro SD card, and is a perfect foil for power users.
But at the same time, WP7 is a better-looking OS, with fast and slick interface. It may not have myriad of options, but even with its simple and streamlined user interface, it will please most users. Unless you are absolutely sure of why you want an Android phone, consider Lumia 710. At its price point, it packs in enough to stand apart in the crowded smartphone market.
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