Review Product I Review Hand Phone I Nokia Lumia 710 Review

I purchased the Nokia Lumia 710 just over two months ago after having a disappointing experience with the 'HTC Hero'. I had experienced nothing but problems with the Hero and was eager for a change. I bought my Lumia 710 on eBay, pre-owned, for an impressive price of just £45 which really surprised me as the phone was in great condition and unlocked to all networks. If you were to purchase this phone, I would certainly recommend using eBay, (only if you know what you are doing), as this is where you will find the phone for the cheapest price and still in great condition (in my experience).

Pros: - The Lumia range seems to be focused around personalisation, and the 710 definitely delivers this. There are many cases of many different colours which you can purchase for the phone for a really cheap price, (eBay or Amazon would probably be your best bet for cases at the cheapest price, also). The Windows Phone 7.8 operating system also offers you a wide range of colours to choose from to personalise the live tiles which help you to navigate around your phone from the home page to your favourite applications. You are able to choose the overall theme/background of the phone from either 'light', (a white background) or 'dark', (a black background). Therefore, personalisation and user choice seems to be a big focus of Nokia and Microsoft with this particular range of phones, which is certainly effective in the user truly making their phone their own.

- The Lumia 710 has an eloquent and sleek design, including the touch screen feature, which really make the phone look and feel like an expensive and high valued piece of equipment despite the low cost at which it is available for around the web. The phone only has three main buttons, firstly a back button to return to the previous page/application when pressed, and when held displays the applications which are open on the phone, making it easy to navigate between applications which can be useful if you are surfing the web and texting at the same time. Secondly, the Windows button which returns you to the home page when pressed and when held displays a voice command feature in which you can instruct the phone to 'text' or 'call' somebody from your address book, or perform a web search, all hands free. I have had much experience with this feature and find the voice recognition quite disappointing, however this could be due to my strong, northern English accent. Finally, a search button which when clicked takes you to the Bing home page to perform a web search. This can be faster than opening Internet Explorer and performing a search, however I much rather prefer Google to Bing, and Microsoft, being Microsoft, make it unable for you to change the search feature to Google instead of Bing. 

- I have found the battery on the Lumia 710 to be of much better quality to that of other mobile phones, even new phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S4. The battery on this phone usually lasts me a full day and only needs to be charged overnight when used generally throughout the day, however if the phone is used excessively, (particularly on applications such as YouTube), it may only last a few hours. However, this is much better compared to my old HTC Hero which would need charging at least twice a day, and overnight, with general use. Therefore I find the battery on the Lumia 710 to be of good quality, and Nokia themselves are renowned for their long lasting batteries.
 
- Despite the camera on the Lumia 710 only being 5 megapixels, I can assure you that the camera seems, (at least) to be of 7-10 megapixel quality. This is only improved by the camera's built in flash and auto-focus features which really help to capture wonderful images and videos. The phone also makes it really easy to upload images to social networking sites and to email them, making picture sharing faster and more efficient. 

Cons:
- The only major drawback with the Lumia 710 in my opinion is the lack of excitement in the Windows Phone Marketplace. The Lumia 710 is not able to update any further than Windows Phone 7.8, and most of the new and popular apps are usually now only released on Windows Phone 8. However, this does not mean that there aren't any promising or entertaining games and applications in the Marketplace as there are many which will keep you richly entertained and there are those that help to provide third party applications for the popular apps which are unavailable to users, for example as Snapchat has not yet been made available to Windows Phone users, a third party app, 'Swapchat', has been made which has exactly the same features as Snapchat and even allows you to add people and send 'snaps' to those who have the official Snapchat application. I myself am not a fan of purchasing games and applications and so only tend to purchase free apps, however if you are willing to pay for them, there does look to be some really promising and entertaining games in the Marketplace, ranging from £0:79-£2:29 for the majority of games and apps. 

- It could be argued that the screen on the Lumia 710 is too small compared to the new iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4 designs, however some users find a large screen on a phone unattractive. I myself have been satisfied with the size of the screen, which is bigger than the screen on my previous phone.

- The Lumia 710 claims to use 'Gorilla Glass', (scratch resistant glass), which does sound a lot better than it actually is. I myself have taken the risk and decided to use the phone without a screen protector and the phone has gathered some minor scuffs and scratches with general use, so I would recommend that you use a screen protector if you decide to purchase this phone. 

Overall, I think this phone is definitely worth the price it is available for despite the lack of apps, however as you can see in this review, the advantages do outweigh the disadvantages. If you are looking for a new phone and either cannot afford one of the new, top range phones such as the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4 or if you simply don't buy into the hype around these phones and would much rather prefer something simpler, I would certainly recommend this phone to you!

Advantages:
Slender and attractive design, Fast and easy - to - use operating system, Simple yet efficient layout . 

Disadvantages:
Room for improvement with the Marketplace, Screen arguably too small .

Source : http://www.ciao.co.uk/Nokia_Lumia_710__Review_6092688