Rogers Nokia Lumia 710 Review

The Phone

Like the porridge from the fairy tale, the Lumia 710 is not too hot and not too cold: it’s just right. While certainly thicker at 12.5mm than your average disappearing high-end Android phone, the phone is curved around the back in such a way that any excess girth seems to fall away. The edges taper enough to be geometric, but the appearance is more positive in person; I’ve come to enjoy its odd design. Made entirely of a sturdy, fingerprint-happy matte plastic, the back of the device takes with it the camera and volume buttons when removed. These back covers are interchangeable, though none are included in the sparse box.

Around the front, the 3.7-inch ClearBlack TFT display is crisp and colourful, with superlative contrast for a non-AMOLED screen. When turned off, you can barely tell where the screen ends and the bezel begins; when turned on, this is similarly true, though a seasoned veteran will not mistake the rather listless reds and sedate blues for a the crisp and beautiful AMOLED of the Lumia 800. Whites, too, are hued with a touch of grey.

This is not to say that the colours are inaccurate, nor the whites drab. Rather, the lack of vibrancy owes its debt more to the colour accuracy of the TFT technology, as we’ve been spoiled and rather brainwashed to believe that such overextended AMOLED hues are natural. Still, blacks are the displays true strong suit, and for a device priced well below those with screens half the resolution and a quarter the effervescence, it’s hard to fault the Lumia 710.

Specs:

- Windows Phone 7.5 Mango

- 3.7″ 800 x 480 ClearBlack TFT display with Gorilla Glass

- 1.4Ghz MSM8255 Qualcomm Snapdragon processor

- 512MB RAM / 8GB internal storage

- 5MP camera with flash

- WiFi (b/g/n) / Bluetooth / GPS (GLONASS)

- Accelerometer, Compass

- HSDPA 14.4Mbps / HSUPA 5.76Mbps

- GSM 850/900/1800/1900, UMTS 850/1700/1900/2100 Mhz

- 1300mAh battery (replaceable), microSIM slot

- 119 x 62.4 x 12.5 mm

- 125g

Performance

With a Windows Phone, you’re lucky enough to know what you’re going to get. This is true of the Lumia 710: with a 1.4Ghz single-core processor and 512MB RAM, its internals are equal to every other second-generation WP7 device on the market. Where it takes liberties is with internal storage: there are 8GB of non-expandable memory here, so beware you music hoarders and movie watchers. Though Microsoft is claiming that each device is augmented with 25GB of free Skydrive storage, nothing replaces cold hard NAND.

Camera

The Lumia 710 has a 5MP camera that is about as good as the Galaxy Nexus. That is, it takes fairly accurate shots with decent speed, but blown up the results are awash with compression artifacts and grain. From my hands-on with the Lumia 800, whose 8MP camera has a wider aperture, bigger lens and improved sensor, the Lumia 710 is a distant second.

Though its flash is ineffectual (see the left Optimus Prime photo), giving indoor shots a fishbowl-like gloom, the 710 takes nice outdoor photos with sufficient light. The dedicated camera button can be activated even when the screen is off, and the two-step function allows you to set focus and white balance before taking the photo. The shutter button curves slightly with the battery cover, so like the ones on the front it can be a pain to activate. I often ended up taking an unfocused shot when my intention was to press the shutter half-way down.

Software Experience

Windows Phone Mango 7.5 is a huge upgrade over the original Windows Phone 7 release, though to the naked eye its Metro stylings are unchanged. Big-deal features such as multitasking, threaded emails, an improved browser and tight integration with Twitter are the headlines here, but there are a number of other improvements and tweaks that improve the experience.

Let’s start with what Mango is still missing, though. At the moment it is impossible to share multiple photos in a single email; you must click on, and share, each one manually. Windows Phone’s notification system, too, needs work: once a “toast” message appears and quickly disappears from the top of the screen (which is admittedly quite attractive) there is no way to get it back. You must rely on either having a Live Tile on your main screen to indicate you have an email or SMS, or hope you see it in time. Multitasking could use some improvements, too, since unless you return to a “saved-state” app via holding the back button it will restart. This means if you open Facebook,leave it to check Twitter and return to the homescreen to open it again it will purge the Facebook app from memory and start again; you must hold down the back button to return to it from its previous state.

Battery Life

The Lumia 710 has a 1300mAh battery that had no problem lasting me the entire day when used with my main line. Windows Phone is currently a market leader in smartphone battery by limiting the way that apps can operate in the background; with some exceptions, when an app is not in the foreground it is not using any resources. This allows things to stay smooth, and also prevents unwanted battery use.

I was able to get between 10-12 hours of moderate to heavy use in a single day. When leaving the phone idle overnight, it depleted less than 10%, so standby time is also very good.

In our video tests, in which we loop a single clip until the battery dies, the Lumia 710 lasted 5 hrs 24 minutes. Note that the Lumia is only connected to WiFi for these days as to not bias the 3G signal.

Conclusion

Priced at $49.99 on a 3-year term, and $254.99 on a month-to-month plan, the Lumia 710 is a bargain, especially for those unwilling to re-sign a contract. Though its screen and camera are no match for the more-expensive (and coming soon) Lumia 800, this is a fantastic entry-level smartphone and one of the best examples of “the whole package” over individual components. Only when taking photos did I feel like I was missing out on the full smartphone experience, and even then the 5MP camera will suffice for most casual user