Nokia Lumia 710

The cheaper alternative to Nokia's first Windows Phone handset

The Nokia Lumia 710 is the second offering into the Windows Phone arena from Nokia, following the release of the Nokia Lumia 800 late last year.

The first thing you notice when comparing the Nokia Lumia 710 with its older mobile phone sibling is that the Nokia Lumia 710 looks and feels cheaper. And it is. Where the Nokia Lumia 800 SIM-free price is around £430, the Nokia Lumia 710 is expected to cost a somewhat more economical £300.

The reason the Nokia Lumia 710 feels like a cheaper handset is partly down to the weight, coming in at a sprightly 125.5g against the Nokia Lumia 800's 142g. On paper this seems like a good thing, but the smartphone is too light somehow, making it feel unsubstantial compared to its bigger brother.

In addition to this, the Nokia Lumia 710 screen is recessed slightly, and the transition from the front face of the phone to the sides feels quite angular. The result of this styling is that the phone design doesn't look or feel as coherent as the Nokia Lumia 800.

Also we found the separate physical buttons for Back, Home and Search on the Nokia Lumia 710 look and feel cheaper than the integral styling on the Nokia Lumia 800, and we caught the bottom left of the screen when going to press the Back button a number of times.

One major advantage over the Nokia Lumia 800 is that the rear cover is removable, since the Nokia Lumia 710 comes with a replaceable battery. Based on the battery life of the Nokia Lumia 800, the ability to carry a spare battery and swap out may well prove extremely useful.

With the Nokia Lumia 710, Nokia has returned to the days of the changeable covers - rear at least - to further personalise your mobile phone. Although we're all for changeable covers and phone personalisation, removing the cover feels like something we should be doing as little as possible when we saw the exposed pads onto which the side buttons press.

Although phones with changeable covers are more commonly marketed at younger users, the only available payment method for Vodafone and T-Mobile customers is by credit card, which many won't have. This seems odd since Microsoft enabled PayPal as a payment method on the Xbox 360 late last year, and those transitioning from Symbian handsets are used to having the option to pay via their phone bill.

It seems that at present, if you are interested in buying a Windows Phone, then you're best off with Orange, which is supporting pay via phone bill with Microsoft.

When we compared the size of the Nokia Lumia 710 (119 x 62.4 x 12.48mm) with the Nokia Lumia 800 (116.5 x 61.2 x 12.1mm), we were surprised to find it was the larger of the two. The only reason we could find for this was the extra mechanics required for a removable cover and replaceable battery in the Nokia Lumia 710.

The Nokia Lumia 710 and Nokia Lumia 800 share the same screen size (3.7 inches) and resolution (480 x 800p), although the Nokia Lumia 710 is limited to a ClearBlack TFT compared to the ClearBlack AMOLED on the Nokia Lumia 800.

They also both use Gorilla Glass, making them somewhat bomb-proof. The similarities continue to the processor, with both phones using the 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm MSM8255T Scorpion/Snapdragon chip.

Outside of the Nokia stable of handsets, the Lumia 710 is similar to the HTC Radar, which is 11.5g heavier, at 137g, although similarly sized, measuring 120.5 x 61.5 x 10.9mm.

Both phones have a 5MP camera and 8GB of internal memory. But the HTC Radar has a slightly larger 3.8-inch screen and a substantially lower powered processor - a 1GHz single-core Qualcomm MSM8255 Scorpion/Snapdragon.

The Nokia Lumia 710's user interface follows the Windows Phone 7.5 Mangostandard, which means there's no difference in the usability between the Nokia Lumia 710 and the Nokia Lumia 800.

There are some slight differences when compared with the HTC Radar, in that Nokia adds an additional tile colour option (Nokia Blue), 20 additional ringtones and three additional alarm sounds (Nokia calendar, Nokia email and Nokia message). This all means that your new Nokia Windows Phone can still sound like your old Nokia Symbian phone, if you want.

The Windows Phone interface is, at first glance, very different to other smartphone operating systems. As Symbian^3 devices have developed through Symbian Anna to Belle, the home screen has become more Android in appearance, with the menu structure using an app grid with the ability to have folders or sub-menus within menus.

Although there are some similarities to Android, iOS and Symbian in Windows Phone 7.5, the emphasis has changed from having many apps accessible on the home screen to having a few easily accessible apps on the start screen, in a scrollable 2x4 grid, with useful information displayed on their tiles.

This interface with four to eight live tiles on the screen at any time is more intuitive and faster to navigate.

The main negative of the Nokia Lumia 710's interface is the lack of folders, which will hopefully be partially rectified by the release of Windows Phone Tango.

An alphabetically listed app menu is searchable, jumping to first letter functionality when you have 45 or more apps (games don't count) installed. This dearly needs the sub-folder functionality too.