Nokia Lumia 710 review

Nokia has integrated its music service, which works reasonably well. The Music app lets you log into your Nokia Music account – a boon for those who’ve previously bought a Nokia phone and acquired music that can only be played on Nokia devices. The Music app’s Mix Radio function is worth a look – it’s a collection of pre-defined playlists designed to introduce you to artists on Nokia’s roster, and it’s easy to download individual songs that tickle your fancy. The track listings veer towards the popular, but there are some good tunes on there and you can save a playlist for offline playback.

To transfer music and videos to the phone and to get your photos off, you need to use the Zune desktop software. This is a reasonable media player and interface, but we weren’t particularly keen on having to use it – we prefer just dragging and dropping files in Windows Explorer, as you can with an Android phone.

Hardware-wise, the Lumia 710 is an excellent phone. It feels just the right size and shape and feels well made. There’s a dedicated camera shutter button, and we liked the physical Back, Home and Search buttons. Our only real gripe is the top-mounted power button which you need to unlock the screen; we prefer the Lumia 800’s side-mounted model.

The Lumia 710’s 3.7in screen looks sharp, and colour and contrast are great – Nokia’s ClearBlack technology works well with Windows Phone 7’s primary colours, and the screen is very bright. It’s not up there with the Lumia 800’s OLED display, though – blacks aren’t as deep and viewing angles aren’t as wide. The touch interface is smooth and responsive, although it lacks an oleophobic coating to stop fingerprints smudging.

The camera takes good shots, although under fluorescent lighting it picked up a bit of chroma noise. Images were crisp and had natural colours, and the LED flash works well to illuminate dark areas. Videos share the same good image quality, but movement was jerky and focus seemed to jump about in video mode. It’s not up there with the Lumia 800’s camera.

It’s worth pointing out that despite a total of 8GB storage, you only have about 4GB free to store your own apps, photos, videos and music, and there’s no memory card slot for expansion. You can use the free 25GB of cloud storage you get with Microsoft’s SkyDrive, but then downloads will cut into your data plan. Battery life is also disappointing: in our video playback test, the Lumia 710 only lasted for four hours and 19 minutes, compared to 5h 48m from the Lumia 800; we’ve yet to see a Windows Phone 7 handset with particularly impressive battery life.

There’s no doubt the Lumia 710 is a slick, powerful and well-designed phone. Windows Phone 7’s app selection may have some catching up to do, but it’s still a great operating system, so if you’re willing to take the plunge this fun, chunky handset is a good way to go about it. The Nokia Lumia 800 has more storage space and a better camera and screen, and is only around £5 a month more expensive on a similar contract, though.