Nokia Lumia 710 3.7inch Screen Hands On Review

Nokia's Lumia 710, a lower-end, lower-cost Windows Phone sibling to the Lumia 800, has less flash memory at 8GB but will ship in more colors when it arrives in early 2012. (Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET) SUNNYVALE, Calif.--Nokia's first, highly anticipated foray into Windows Phone gives both the phone builder and the software maker a second chance. Two of them, actually. A few hours after Nokia's big unveiling of the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 at Nokia World, Senior Associate Editor Nicole Lee and I went to Nokia's Sunnyvale office to spend some quality time with both phones. (Stay tuned for Nicole's hands-on impressions of the Lumia 800!) The Nokia Lumia 710 is the more midrange of the two, but I must say, it was attraction at first sight. The phone itself is pretty typical in dimensions and layout--Nokia left all the design risks to the Nokia Lumia 800, with its polycarbon unibody design, lack of a battery cover, and single visible screw. Yet the Lumia 710 fits together well, feels good in the hand, and has some fun, funky colors and quirks that set it apart from the legion of sleek 'n' glossy, black and gray phones that seem to dominate. The colors are a big part of the phone's personality, so let's start there. The Lumia 710 comes in black and white, but there are five choices for removable back covers: black, white, cyan, fuchsia, and yellow. When you buy the black phone, you'll get the black color and one other cover. The same formula extends to the white phone. I saw white, fuchsia, and cyan colors, which looked especially jazzy when paired with Windows Phone's various customizable OS tile colors. Now on to the specs! The Lumia 710 has a 3.7-inch LCD screen with a WVGA 800x480-pixel resolution. It employs Nokia's ClearBlack display technology, which helps filter out the light to improve contrast, and also improve readability in direct sunlight. While not nearly as stunning as the Lumia 800's AMOLED display of the same size, it still looks nice and bright and colorful. One benefit of the Windows Phone OS is that the live tiles and icons are large and the design is clear-cut, so a smaller screen isn't as much of a hindrance as it could be, at least in terms of navigation. While on the compact side, the 3.7-inch screen didn't feel claustrophobic in the hour or so I had the phone in hand. Beneath the display is an oblong bubble of plastic that serves as the button for the three Windows Phone keys: the Back button, the Windows button, and the Search button. It looks pretty cool, but isn't as responsive as I'd like. The buttons on either end have more snapback, but I wasn't always sure I was hitting the Windows button in the center. Nokia could have done a bit better there. For a little more personalization, you can swap out the white or black back cover for one with a magenta, cyan, or yellow hue. (Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET) There are the volume rocker and photo shutter button on the right spine, a 3.5mm headset jack and power button up top, and a Micro-USB charging port. On the back is the 5-megapixel camera lens with LED flash. You'll be happy to know that it supports 720p HD video capture at 30 frames per second. Nokia is known for its strong camera phones, so I wasted little time working those angles. Most of the photos I took were indoors and saturated with plenty of natural light supplied by large windows, and the photo quality looked pretty good overall, though I'll need some more time and lighting situations to really determine quality. Features and apps Inside, the Lumia 710 runs Windows Phone 7.5 Mango (full review), so it will contain all those software features. It will also have three new apps found only on Nokia-made Windows Phones. The first is Nokia Drive, which will offer turn-by-turn voice navigation (as Android does). Instead of using Bing maps, Nokia Drive uses maps provided by Navteq, which Nokia also owns. While I did quickly peruse the app, voices weren't installed on the test phones I saw, but Nokia promises that you'll be able to download a variety of voices and languages. The service is free. There will also be the Nokia Music app, which isn't yet available. It will offer Mix Radio and free streaming music. The ESPN Hub is the third unique software addition; it will have a host of scores and details for sports lovers, integrated right into the phone. Like the Lumia 800, the Lumia 710 is powered by a 1.4GHz single-core processor, and its performance felt nice and zippy during my brief testing period. Of course, I wasn't e-mailing or using the phone for any strenuous tasks.