Nokia Lumia 710 Review – The Build & Design of mid-range Windows Phone


The design review of Nokia Lumia 710 has been completed and is being published with all those concerns, a consumer will want to consider before buying. Not heading inside the device for evaluating Windows Phone 7.5, for now we are presenting the aspects from outside with the look and feel and how will it reside in your hands.

First thing first! Nokia Lumia 710 is fully covered with plastic. But! it’s worth mentioning that it’s a Nokia. And when it’s Nokia, a plastic is not a thing to worry about. Yes! it’s really nicely built and finished. The device is available in two colours, the black and the white in the front body, while the back cover gives you a few options to choose from various other colours including the black and white. The one we received is of course fully white on front and back, you can see that.

 

In short, the feel of the device in hands is pretty nice. I personally like (and mention where needed) the screen size of 4 inches or a little above 0.1 or 0.2 inches if it’s the mobile device or a smartphone in your hands. Above that? is as much awkward (as bigger) to bring closer to your ears. Well but the Lumia 710 is not a high-end device and will serve you with a screen size of 3.7 inches only. That’s actually smaller than what I would prefer for typing experience on a virtual on-screen keyboard. It was not that bad however while typing on the screen on Lumia 710.

Lumia 710 is equipped with a ClearBlack TFT LCD and the resolution is 800×480 pixels. With 3.7 inch screen size it makes the pixel density of  approximately 252ppi. That is pretty good for itself. Display quality is not up to that of an AMOLED as of course it’s just an LCD but again it’s good when compared to other LCD displays due to the ClearBlack display added and the Gorilla Glass on top.

 

Let’s just start from the head where the Lumia 710 is hosting the power button and ports (from left to right in following picture)

Power/lock button on the left, 3.5mm audio jack in the middle and micro USB port on the right. USB port also serves for charging the device via USB charger provided within the retail package. Unlike previous Nokia devices including Symbian and MeeGo, this Lumia 710 being Windows Phone won’t support Composite TV out capability via 3.5mm jack.

 

Image at the right side above is providing the bottom-right profile view of Nokia Lumia 710 that doesn’t host any thing useful but a wrist strap  hole at the corner for safety if you prefer.

Image at the left and the one at right below is providing the left and right profile views of Nokia Lumia 710 respectively.

 

You can see that on the left side there is nothing but only a nail latch to open the back cover while the right side of the device is hosting a camera shutter key downside to give access to camera operation with your right index finger and a volume rocker is hosted the upside for volume control and various other functionality in various apps.

 

Experience with volume rocker key is pretty good on Lumia 710, however the camera key is little annoying when pressing down the half-way or  the full-way. I really didn’t have an idea if I’ve pressed it the half-way but the picture gets just snapped. May be a unit fault or it’s just as it is or may be one could get use to it in the long run. Note that the camera key also unlocks the device when it’s locked and takes you to the camera user interface.

Further towards the most important part of a phone the earpiece on the front at top-center position of the device. An ambient light sensor and a proximity sensor resides at left to the earpiece. Nokia Lumia 710 doesn’t have a front-facing camera.

 

Below the screen there are standard Windows Phone keys, Back key, Windows/Start key, and the Search key with a single transparent piece of plastic separated and little extruded from the surface of the front panel. Right in the middle and the edge of the surface, a mouthpiece is provided.

Getting towards the back side of the phone, there is 5 megapixels camera hosted on the body along side the single LED flash light and a microphone. At the bottom there is loud speaker also on the body.

 

Back cover reveals the camera with a hole on it and a grille at the bottom provides air-through the speaker.

Removing the back cover reveals only the battery compartment and a micro SIM card slot locked with the battery. You have to remove the battery before removing/exchanging the SIM card. You will not find extendible memory card option in Lumia 710 but you won’t end up with the internal mass storage of 8GB on board, additional 7GB cloud storage will be assigned to your SkyDrive account once you signed up with your Windows Live account in the device.

 

Final words for Nokia Lumia 710 are pretty good for usability. Handling the phone is also good for its size and dimensions but the shiny plain back cover wasn’t that friendly to be gripped. We heard that a few back covers are matte finished or only the black one is, that will be lot better than this I believe. But the front and sided body edges are plain shiny in both the white and black.

The white colour of the device I am holding above, I didn’t like that. A little bit off-white would be a rich colour. You can say that it’s neat white. It’s also not fully plain and does have a very slight pattern that you can’t see in the pictures but that makes it acceptable.

The quality of the build is not questionable just like other Nokia handsets. If you have no object to use a Windows Phone OS and want to get  a mid-range smartphone then it’s a good go.

Or if you have something to ask about it. Let it be out below in the comments. We’ll get an answer for that.

Nokia Lumia 710 – Gallery

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