Nokia Lumia 710 Review

The little brother of the more famous and popular Lumia 800 that we reviewed earlier, finally came to our labs, looking coy and modest, knowing how the elder sibling broke our hearts, with the crazy pricing and drawbacks that it had. But, this one? Well, it wants to step out of the shadows of the 800 and wants to be noticed, mainly because it’s almost a full ten grand cheaper than the 800. Does the Lumia 710 rekindle our relationship with Nokia’s Windows Phones? Read on to find out. 

Design and Build Quality

The Lumia 710 we got for review came dressed up in a demure black outfit, but if you’re the more flashy type, there are a range of back covers that you can choose from at the time of buying the device. The back is covered in a matte finish whilst the front is all glass and is more prone to fingerprints. At a thickness of 12.5 mm, it’s not the thinnest phone in the market currently but it’s got a contoured and curved back which gives it an overall ‘slim’ feeling.

The 710 - from all sides

The front consists of the 3.7-inch ClearBlack capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels and Corning Gorilla Glass protection. The speaker is located at the back alongwith a five megapixel shooter, an LED flash and the first of the two noise cancellation microphones. We couldn’t really locate the second one, but we’re assuming it’s underneath the chassis or is clubbed next to one of the holes for the speakers. The 710 comes with an ambient light sensor, proximity sensor and magnetometer sensor (for GPS assistance).

The top of the device

The top of the phone consists of the microUSB slot, the power button and the headphone jack, while the microSIM slot is located beneath the 1300mAh battery. The volume rocker and camera shutter buttons are located on the right. Did we miss something? Yes, with 8GB of internal memory, Nokia has offered to do away with a microSD card slot, so that may be a downer for some. 

The standard three physical buttons

We don’t want Kevlar or polycarbonate, if you’re charging us a bomb for that. Give us a sturdy design and we’ll be more than happy. And guess what, the Lumia 710 listened to us! The Lumia 710 feels extremely solid in the hand and comes as a welcome relief from all that Android ‘plasticy-ness’ we have been subjected to in the recent past. At a weight of 125.5 grams, the 710 has the right balance of being light as well as sturdy. In terms of design and build, the Lumia 710 nails it, and is easily one of the best out there in the same price bracket

Interface

A combination of a 1.4 GHz single core Scorpion processor, a Qualcomm MSM8255 chipset and Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, seems to work fantastically well for the Lumia 710. It’s fast, zippy and shows no signs of lagging down and if you’re new to the Windows Phone world, we’ll describe it in one word for you, its eye candy. In terms of looks alone, Android’s grid UI or even Apple’s UI stick out like a sore thumb in front of the brilliant, almost magical, use of colours in the phone’s user interface. 

Superfast interface

But is it as functional? Firstly, we’re labelling multitasking as having a pseudo-function on the phone, because for example, if you get a notification from a Whatsapp contact on your homescreen, and you click on it, the app will have to load up every single time as you can’t enable background tasks for all third party applications. However, that’s more of a developer issue and it’s just a matter of time before that gets rectified. Also, a long press of the back button will show you your most recent apps and you can quickly jump between them; so multitasking is there, but it does need some minor tweaking to prevent third party apps from re-loading each time you access them.