Nokia Lumia 710 (T-Mobile)

When does the Windows Phone 7 wow start? The Nokia Lumia 710 is a perfectly fine midrange cell phone?which offers a solid collection of features with an easy-to-use OS for only $49 with contract, and free turn-by-turn navigation is a tasty bonus. But this phone doesn't glow with the must-have desirability that a new platform needs to take off, which means it's unlikely to draw many likely Android or iPhone buyers away from their phones of choice.

Physical Design
Yet another nondescript black slab, the Lumia 710 is nearly indistinguishable from many other similar phones when it's switched off. It's made entirely of black plastic, with a curved, soft-touch back and a shiny front panel that attracts finger grease much too easily. The whole body feels a little cheap. The three Windows phone action buttons?Back, Home, and Search?are part of a raised physical bar below the 800-by-480-pixel, 3.7-inch screen.

I'm not particularly impressed by Nokia's "ClearBlack" display. Yes, the polarizing layer greatly reduces light reflections and makes blacks look very black, but using cheap plastic rather than glass for the screen makes images look a little fuzzier than on the competing HTC Radar 4G ($99, 3.5 stars).

At 4.7 by 2.5 by .5 inches (HWD) and 4.4 ounces, this is a relatively small, light phone that will fit comfortably in most hands and not weigh down pockets. It lacks the reassuring solidity of the competing metal-bodied HTC Radar, though.

Along with the slightly raised power button, there's a standard MicroUSB charging port and 3.5-mm headset jack on the top panel. Like most Windows Phones, there's no memory card slot here; you get the 8GB you get, and you don't get upset.

Network and Connectivity
The Lumia 710 is a decent voice phone, although it has some quirks. Signal reception is fine. Sound through the earpiece is crystal clear, although transmissions let some background noise through on the other end. Wind creates a major problem with the speakerphone, causing it to skip and stutter; it's a loud speakerphone otherwise.?

I had no problem pairing the phone with my Aliph Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset ($129, 4 stars), but it had one irritating bug. Voice dialing had to be activated by pressing the phone's Windows button the first time after I connected the headset. After that, I could activate the voice dialing directly from the headset, and it was accurate.

The 710 connects to T-Mobile's network using HSPA+ 14.4, which is disappointing when you consider the network supports HSPA+ 42 speeds. This isn't a 4G device. I got speeds slightly faster than an HTC Radar that was in the same location, averaging around 1.5Mbps down and .8Mbps up. That's much slower than HSPA+ 21 phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S II?($299, 4.5 stars), which can get 5-6Mbps down. There's no Wi-Fi hotspot/Internet sharing option on this phone. It's a world phone, though. Battery life was acceptable at 6 hours, 18 minutes of talk time.

Setup, Performance and Apps
Windows Phone 7 is easy to use, but Nokia is trying to make it even simpler with an exclusive, custom setup service. I wasn't able to try this, but when you buy a Lumia, you'll schedule a call so a Nokia rep can sit you down and help you set up your phone for an hour. That's pretty neat.

The Lumia 710 uses the same 1.4GHz Qualcomm S2 processor that you'll find in the Samsung Focus Flash ($49, 3.5 stars) and Focus S ($199, 3.5 stars), and it's definitely faster than the previous generation of Windows phones. Robert Varga's WP Bench software rated the CPU 40 percent faster, just like the megahertz number said, although overall performance is slower because memory and GPU performance is pretty much the same as on the previous version. Windows Phone has never felt sluggish, though, and the phone zipped along in normal use.

Nokia's flagship, exclusive apps are Maps and Drive. Drive gives you free, spoken driving directions, which no other Windows phone has (all Android phones do, however). Nokia's maps, meanwhile, are much more attractive and readable than Bing Maps and include public transit routes. Neither app is much good for arbitrary directions, though?while you can find directions from where you are to somewhere else, you can't ask for directions between two other points.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/1VPDupWhmLw/0,2817,2398230,00.asp

jodie fisher zooey deschanel michael jordan ryan braun yvette prieto hypertrophic cardiomyopathy maurice sendak