Design

It doesn’t have the playful colors and the back personalized plates of the European sibling, but U.S. version of Nokia Lumia 710 has a distinctive flair. There are 2 main colors offered – all-black (this was my review model), and the one which has white frosty front.

Nokia Lumia 710 is a phone that is crafted from plastic that is unassuming and aesthetically, it looks quite mundane especially at the first glance. When you pick up this 4.4 ounce phone, it becomes clear that it is quite solid if not luxurious. This handset is 4.69 inches tall, 2.46 inches wide, 0.49 inch thick, and there are rounded attractive edges. It fits in to any tight pockets with out too much of trouble. Back cover of this phone has soft-touch, rubbery coating which gives a good grip.

Front side has a 3.7-inches WVGA screen having a resolution of 800×480-pixels, it is smaller and isn’t as sharp as qHD or the full-HD displays that you get on the Android higher-end devices. It doesn’t have the deep fantastic blacks and the eye-popping colors that you’d find on the other phones having AMOLED displays, like Galaxy S II, Galaxy Nexus, and Samsung Focus S, or even original Focus. Still, the image quality is quite pleasing to the eye.

Nokia has put in unique ClearBlack technology for boosting the screen contrast. For example, I loved watching YouTube HD trailer of “The Avengers”. I saw a lot of eye candy like the bright fiery explosions, flowing capes, energy blasts, and Scarlett Johansson’s red hair which was arranged artfully. Also, screen of the Lumia 710 has noticeably darker blacks as compared to the display on HTC Radar 4G, which leaked some light from the edges.

Handling the typing duties is pretty standard of Windows Phone virtual key board with block like square buttons that are closely pressed together. A lot of buttons do not double as the punctuation marks, but long-pressing period button pulls up collection of the symbols that you’d often-enter. Also just like all the WP7 handsets, this Lumia 710 does not have haptic feedback option. In spite of this, my experience typing was pretty comfortable and I quickly and easily typed e-mails and messages.

Above the screen there is non descript ear piece and below that there is flexible and thin bar which serves as 3 keys for Windows Home, Search, and Back. While I mostly like the physical buttons, I found these keys pretty stiff and hard to press. Same holds true for small tiny volume rocker and the dedicated button for camera on right side of the handset and recessed power button on top edge. The top side also has 3.5mm standard head phone jack and a Micro-USB port.

Back side has five mega pixels camera having LED flash and big speaker. Rip off the handset’s battery cover reveals a battery of 1,300mAh, and removing this will reveal the SIM card slot of the phone. The battery can be removed here unlike HTC Radar 4G, in which the battery comes locked inside the phone’s metal unibody chassis.

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango interface of Nokia Lumia 710 is quite identical to other WP7 phones which I have used before. That isn’t unexpected, as Microsoft has laid down very strict rules about how the Windows Phone will run on the mobile phones. I am not complaining here but my familiarity with Mango OS got me up and running in a few seconds. For the people who haven’t used a Windows Phone OS often, home screen, called Start Menu, has Live Tiles which are vertically arranged. Functioning is the same way as the app shortcut icons on the Android and the iOS, these Tiles also like widgets; they pull in data and display info real time.

Messaging, Gmail, and Email Tiles, for instance, show number of the new messages, and Pictures flip through the gallery for high lighting snap shots. Swipe left and you will see main menu having full list of the installed apps. The apps can be pined and the other things like videos and picture albums can also be attached to home screen for getting quick access. People Tile will tap in to social media network just like Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail, and Facebook accounts for populating the contact list and providing you live updates. This is pretty engaging and slick UI which is served in modern and clean font.

Here also, you get access to Microsoft Marketplace app store. There selection here is smaller as compared to Android and iOS store fronts but it does have a lot of software basics, like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Tripit, amongst others. T-Mobile and Nokia have pre-installed some handy titles too, particularly Netflix for streaming movies while traveling, Weather Channel app, and the Nokia Drive for getting turn-by-turn free GPS navigation. If you really need the directions bad, I would recommend you to go for TeleNav GPS Nav app which costs $9.99 a month.

Nokia Lumia 710 has all the solid multimedia features too and this handset connects to Microsoft Zune video and music stores. All-you-can-eat plan of subscription costs $10 a month and it lets you download unlimited songs and save them on the phone. You can buy music from the phone directly. But I was frustrated to see that video first need to be downloaded to a computer before you can transfer to a handset. Nokia Lumia 710 also comes with good Xbox Live integration and it supports personal avatars and profiles that are ported from popular service of console gaming along with selection of some good mobile games.

The Finnish manufacturer has made a good reputation for itself in terms of engineering quality regarding the cameras inside their handsets, and this phone too isn’t an exception to that. Frankly speaking, I was not expecting a lot from the five megapixels camera from this phone but the pictures that I clicked were pleasantly surprising. Even in the early morning weak light, the colors were warm, lifelike, and rich. That said, the details in pictures were pretty soft along with artifacts that are visible in test still-life image.

Built-in camcorder will capture movie clip in 720p HD quality and , and videos that which I filmed had same enjoyable qualities, along with almost glossy quality, but auto white balance did not compensate for the lighting fluorescent indoors. If you video chatting then you are out of luck because Nokia Lumia 710 doesn’t have any front-facing camera.

In my tests, I used the Nokia Lumia 710 with GSM network (HSPA+) at New York with T-Mobile service. The voices of the callers were clearly audible but weren’t too loud. On the other side, people said that my voice was pretty clear but there was digitized quality in it. The audio piped through Lumia’s speaker phone and was louder than that in ear piece. It can be heard easily in medium sized conference room. The callers said that speaker phone picked my voice along with greater volume.

Nokia Lumia 710 has 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm processor, 512MB RAM, and 8 GB internal memory. There isn’t anything spectacular here but there is everything that you’d need for running Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. It runs as good as other WP7 phones like Samsung Focus Flash and HTC Radar 4G. I didn’t see any delays or lags while flipping through the phone’s different launching applications and menus.

Nokia Lumia 710 is a 4G phone and maximum theoretical data throughput is 14.4Mbps. I used free BandWidth app for my tests and got average downloading speeds of 4 Mbps. The upload results were 720Kbps on average. This is much different from the Verizon LTE 4G network or the AT&T new LTE service. Both of them have download speeds in middle teens and for uploads, there is single high digits.

The manufacturer says that Nokia Lumia 710 will give you standby time of 16 days and talk time of seven hours. In my anecdotal use, I got a little more than 26 hours with light use (testing, short calls, Web surfing, & messaging) after which I had to run to an AC outlet. FCC radiation tests say that this phone SAR digital rating of about 1.15 watts per kg at ear and about 1.18 watts per kg when you wear it on your body.

Nokia has made compelling Windows phone with Lumia 710 having a price tag of $49.99. Sure, your family and friends along with the costly Android hardware likely won’t be impressed much by the small LCD display and the plastic design on Lumia. But on the flip side you get a low price tag, solid build quality, and also Windows Phone 7.5 Mango capabilities will surely cheer you up.

Pros: Thanks to the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango OS, this handset has lot of power for both productive and fun uses. The engaging and smooth user interface, good photo quality, and 720p HD video is served in an affordable and compact package.

Cons: All-plastic construction of Lumia 710 isn’t really luxurious and the physical small buttons are a bit stiff and tough for pressing. There is not front-facing camera either so you can’t do video chatting.

Bottom line: The Nokia Lumia 710 costs $49.99 and it is a great way for getting growing capabilities of Windows Mango handset at really low prices. This isn’t an Android smart phone having AMOLED luscious screen but still it is pretty practical and covers all mobile bases.

Officially, the manufacturers have not revealed the actual price of this smartphone, however there are rumors that it would be around Rs. 30000.

Nokia Lumia 900 is a candybar smart phone, which operates on Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. The dimensions of the smartphone are 127.8 x 68.5 x 11.5 mm and it weighs almost around 160 grams. It has 4.30 inches huge AMOLED multi-touch touchscreen display, with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. It has pixel density of 217 ppi. The touchscreen display has various features such as Proximity sensor, Light sensor and Scratch-resistant glass.

Nokia Lumia 900 has a 1830 mAh capacity battery, which offers a talktime of 7 hours and stand-by time of 16 days. The smartphone has 1400 MHz, Single core, Snapdragon APQ8055 processor. It is packed with graphics processor. With a system memory of 512 MB RAM, Lumia 900 has a built-in storage capacity of 16000 MB. Using a microSD card you can expand its memory up to 32 GB.

The stylish smartphone has both primary camera and secondary camera. It has 8 mega pixels rear camera, which has a Dual LED flash and has various features such as Auto focus, Video stabilizer, Touch to focus, Geo tagging and Exposure control. The camcorder can record 720p HD videos. The smartphone has a 1.3 megapixels front-facing camera, which is mostly used for video calling.

Talking about the multimedia options, Nokia Lumia 900 has a music player and a radio. The music player has interesting features such as album art cover as well as background playback. It has an FM radio as well. The smartphone provides internet browsing and supports HTML and HTML5. Lumia 900 supports various built-in online services such as Flickr, YouTube (upload), Picasa, and Twitter.

Buyers who want to pre-order the Lumia 800 they could place their orders online or they could even visit any Nokia Priority store for pre-booking the handset. Speaking at the even an official from Nokia said, “The Nokia Lumia 800 can now be had for demo from Nokia priority dealers starting today.”

While Nokia has only announced the pre-booking of their Lumia 800 handset, but according one of the dealers they are taking pre-booking for both Nokia Lumia 710 and 800. One of the official also said that customers willing to get their hands around the  latest offerings from Nokia, could book their handsets by paying anything between Rs 2000 to Rs 5000, which means the minimum booking account is Rs 2000.

One of the Nokia official told that the Nokia Lumia 800 will be entering the Indian market sometime in between 10th of December and 15th of December, but we haven’t got any expected date for the release of Nokia Lumia 700.

We haven’t got any details on the pricing of the two impending Nokia handsets in India. Nokia proclaimed the launch of their first Windows Phone powered handsets – the Nokia Lumia 800 and Nokia Lumia 710 on 14th of November in India.

The Nokia Lumia 800 looks pretty much like Nokia’s N9 devices. The Lumia 800 comes boasts a 3.7-in AMOLED ClearBlack curved screen and has a 1.4 GHz processor together with a graphics processor and hardware acceleration.

The phone also has HD video playback, Carl Zeiss optics, internal user memory of 16 GB and free SkyDrive space of 25 GB to store music and images.

The Finnish cell phone manufacturer expects that the Asha handsets will impress the young buyers and will fit in the budget of price-mindful consumers, while they target the smartphone market that runs on Windows Phone 7.

Speaking at the event the managing director of Nokia India, D Shivakumar said, “We at Nokia work to offer the best and the most relevant and affordable innovations to the customers. Nokia Asha 200 and Nokia Asha 300 will be raising the bar in the music world and mobile internet segment. Both the handsets will be companionable with Nokia’s ‘limitless music service’.

In the recent past, Nokia has faced some tough competition from local manufacturers such as Karbonn and Micromax. Although Nokia still is the biggest market leader in India, we think that its share has come down by around 20 percent of past few years.

Nokia Asha 200 is the first dual-SIM QWERTY phone from Nokia and offers one-click access to chat through Nokia Messaging and email and some other social networking services such as Facebook. The Asha 200 comes with a 2 MP camera having enhanced stereo FM radio and 4 X zoom. The Nokia Asha 300 has both a keypad and a touchscreen. The Asha 300 offers support for 3G networks and has a 5 MP camera for clicking snaps, which further could be arranged and edited in Nokia gallery.

The Nokia Link app makes transferring the music, videos and photos from your Nokia phone to PC or vice versa incredibly easy. Using the Nokia Link you can also copy all the content from your mobile to the applications in your computer such as iTunes or Windows Media Player.

Although, currently the Nokia Link is only offered on Nokia N9 and the N950 developers device, this app is also compatible with Symbian 3/Anna and Belle handsets.

You could download the Nokia Link for Mac and Windows PC both, and once you’ve installed the app on your PC, you will have to connect your Nokia Device, choose Sync and connect through the USB connection mode. Isn’t it simple?

System Requirements:

Nokia Link supports the following operating systems:

• Windows 7 32 bit and 63 bit
• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
• Max OSX Lion

Supported Applications:

Once you’ve connected the Nokia Link you could transfer media files from your handset to the following listed apps:

Windows:

• Windows Media Player 12 or above
• Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 or above
• iTunes 9.0.2 or above

Mac:

• iTunes 8.2 or later
• iPhoto 8 or later

You can even use the Nokia Link for copying files from or to your computer, and because we’ve just used the app we think that its rather smooth and we didn’t faced any problem in using it. We strongly recommend this app for all the Nokia device users.

The Nokia Lumia 800 is the latest flagship Windows Phone device of Nokia, and went for sale only about a week ago. Nokia has recently assured a solution for the power problems with the handset. The first of the two promised software update is expected to arrive in December, while the second is expected to follow in January.

In their support forum Nokia said, “We appreciate that some people have expressed worries about the Lumia 800’s battery life. According to the earlier examination a lot of Lumia 800 is enjoying the handset without any problems. The software update that’s expected to enter the market in December will be including betterment in power efficiency, while the second update which is expected to enter the market in early January, will be providing further enhancements to battery charging and battery life.

We reviewed the handset ourselves but didn’t found any problems with the battery, but apparently a lot of customers have reported the problem with the battery. The problems seems to be with the firmware of the handset instead of the physical battery, which we think is a good news for Nokia, because they wont have to replace the entire battery for replacing the defective units.

According to a brand new image of an allegedly impending Nokia smartphone running on Windows Phone platform we might just have got the first look of Nokia 601. At least that’s what the rumor suggests. But we aren’t confirming it.

But there are rumors that it’s the same device that a lot of users in the internet world spotted in one of Nokia’s advertisement. As it appears from the images the Nokia Lumia 601 very well could be flaunting an 8 MP camera, which according to some of the experts is the same that we saw on C7.

But the overall look of the device looks rather amateurish. At least this is what the images here can suggest.

Now, considering all the leaked details and facts about the handset we aren’t very convinced that we’re looking at the Nokia Lumia 601.  The reason why we said that is because the Lumia 601 is supposed to be inferior to Nokia Lumia 710, and hence it having an 8 MP cameras doesn’t makes any sense. But still we won’t establish any facts or won’t say anything on the entire issue until we don’t get any confirmation.

There’s an image on Twitter of the PowerPoint presentation, which was given at the developers convene. There were plenty of developers present at the Mexican Nokia Developer Day, where Nokia showcased the two brand new Symbian updates that the company is working on.

The first Symbian update is nicknamed as Symbian Carla and according to the reports; this new update will be having a brand new browser having the number 8.0. Furthermore, the new update is expected to bring in incredible Dolby surround sound. This is not the only enhancement that the upgrade will be bringing, it’s said that the Symbian Carla will also be offering NFC with enhanced functionality. The Symbian Carla operating system is also expected to deliver improved widgets for the users.

Moreover, Nokia has introduced on more update for their Symbian platform and it’s called as Donna. The Symbian Donna will be supporting dual-core processors, and will be making the Symbian Smartphones even smarter. Though, the company didn’t give any features regarding the update in the presentation. Definitely, the heir to the Nokia N8 is supposed to be powered by a dual-core processor, and will also be offering a bettered camera.

Recently, we heard that the 2012 Symbian might run the dual-core processors, which we think now is quite possible.

Speaking at the launch, the Managing Director of Nokia India, Mr. D. Shivakumar said, “in the past couple of months, the company has been toning the environment of Nokia’s all new Lumia family to enter India, and finally we have achieved stronger operator partnerships, a set developer ecosystem and a brand new retail look to deliver imposing content for enhancing the Lumia Experience of Nokia an unforgettable experience for the Indian Customers.”

The Chairman of Microsoft India, Mr. Bhaskar Pramanik was also present at the event, and he said, “The all  new Nokia Lumia 710 and Nokia Lumia 800 smartphones are a strong blend of Nokia and Microsoft’s main assets and will be delivering brand new experiences by the incorporation of service assets across search, location, social, advertising, commerce and entertainment.”

The two newly launched handsets runs on the updated Windows Mango Phone Operating System, which also is known as Windows Phone 7.5. Nokia has confirmed that the two handsets will be entering the Indian market in mid-December. Disappointingly, the prices of both these newly launched handsets are friendly for Indian customers, and while you will be paying a hefty Rs 29,000 for the Nokia Lumia 800, while the Nokia Lumia 710 is expected to be priced around Rs 19,000.

The Nokia Lumia 800 pretty much looks like the Nokia N9, which already is in Indian markets. The Lumia 800 has a 3.7 in AMOLED Clear Black arc display screen and gets its power from a 1.4 GHz processor with a graphics processor and hardware acceleration.

The Nokia Lumia 800 will also be having an 8 megapixel camera, with instant share feature and Carl Zeiss optics, internal memory of 16 GB, HD video playback and free Sky Drive storage of 25 GB to store music and images. The Lumia 800 will also be having a 3D graphics hardware accelerator, which is well capable of handling games rather easily.

The Nokia Lumia 710, on the other hand boasts a simple design, but still has plenty of advanced features, which reminds us of present Symbian Belle handsets. The Lumia 710 boasts a comparatively smaller 5 megapixel camera sensor, which is capable of 720 p video recording, while the graphic accelerator and processor are the same that we saw in Lumia 800. The Nokia Lumia 710 will be available four exchangeable rear panels which will be in Black, White, Cyan and Fuchsia colors. The Lumia 710 will only be having 8 GB of en suite storage without having any card slot pretty much like its sibling. The Nokia Lumia 710 will also be having free Sky Drive storage of 25 GB.

The Nokia N9 entered the market just before the Nokia World 2011 event where Nokia was suppose to reveal their big plans for deliverance, that is to say adopting Windows Phone. The N9 runs on, what was considered as Nokia’s savior in the modern smartphone market, the MeeGo. A touch of exclusivity never harmed any gadget, and so is the case with Nokia N9, though we think that Finn should’ve focused primarily on MeeGo, rather than the Microsoft’s deal.

The review here will tell us, what exactly Nokia N9 has to offer us, and whether or not will it be able to create a splash in the smartphone market.

Built and Specifications:

Built and designing have been the forte of Nokia and even the rudest of Symbian critic have not got a chance to criticize Nokia for its cell phone built. Nokia has always worked towards building slim and attractive design for the smartphones and phones. And the same is the case with Nokia N9.

Nokia clearly has outdone itself with the design of Nokia N9, and measuring 116.45 mm x 61.2 mm x 7.6-12.1 mm and weighing 135g, the N9 looks like a attractive handset with tapered ends. The feel of the N9 is something in between plasticky sand anodized metal. The N9 could be had in any of the three colors its offered in: magenta, black and cyan.

The frontage of the Nokia N9 houses a 3.9 in AMOLED touchscreen, which is capacitive and has native resolution of 854 x 480pixels. The resolution here is the highest we’ve seen in any of the Nokia Smartphones, and the screen here makes use of the ClearBlack polarizing system of Nokia for enhanced contrast. Nokia loves how the glass and the AMOLED has been constructed with no air-gap in between. This results in a picture which appears to be floating under the fingertip.

The colors displayed here on the display appeared pretty decent and icons here appeared pretty clear. The display also gave pretty decent viewing angles, in both landscape and portrait orientation, though it still isn’t the best and we’ve seen some really impressive Super AMOLED panels in Samsung devices. But the good thing here is that its still pretty attractive and gives decent touchscreen response.

The Nokia N9 has pretty limited physical controls, including a lock/power button and volume rocker on the right edge of the handset. Positioned on the top floor of the handset is a 3.5 mm headphone socket, and a hinged cover conceals the microUSB port which can be used for syncing and charging. Positioned alongside that is a really small cavity for a microSIM, which is the same size that you gets in an iPhone 4. The one design complain that we had with this phone was the array of sliding doors and pop-up, the microUSB cover at times proved unwilling to the flutter back down.

The Nokia N9 has an interesting set of features inside, and the N9 runs on a 1 GHz OMAP3630 Texas Instruments processor along with 1 GB of internal RAM and PowerVR SGX530 graphics. There also is an ARM Cortex A8 combination, which only was seen in the mid 2010 when the Motorola Droid X was launched. All this has been coupled with a pentaband UMTS/HSPA+ radio offering support for 5.7 Mbps uploads and 14.4 Mbps downloads. Just as with all the other modern Nokia handsets, the Nokia N9 3G will work pretty decently on both T-mobile and AT&T networks in USA, which is something we haven’t seen in a lot of modern smartphone markets.

Battery:

As far as battery is concerned, Nokia N9 delivers 11 hrs of talk time on GSM usage, and 1.5 hrs of WCDMA usage or around 340 hrs of GSM standby time or 420hrs of WCDMA standby time on a complete charge. If you are doing a lot of browsing or watching a lot of videos and audios, then the battery life might vary from 6.5 hrs to 5 hrs.

Verdict:

The Nokia N9 is one of the finest Nokia smartphones we’ve seen in the market for quite a long time, but the sad thing here is that Nokia hasn’t given it the amount of consideration that the N9 deserved.