Game review: Nokia Lumia 710

There are a few out there at the moment, the two most popular being the iphone, and the android OS phones, all great in their own way unfortunately they can be a bit on the expensive side.

The Nokia Lumia 710 is an alternative worth having a look at. It runs a Windows based operating system which gives you direct access to your xbox live account for starters, ideal for gamers which is why I have featured this phone, and with the introduction of xbox smart glass the Nokia Lumia 710 is even more attractive.

The 3.7 inch screen is perfect for watching movies or playing games, very vibrant and the interface is idiot proof.

You can customise the desktop with different tabs, so updating your social media is easy with apps that link you directly to your social media sites, you can even download your friends directly onto the phone.

With 8GB of storage there is room for your favourite tunes, the MP3 player also plays WMA (Windows Media Audio) just like a PC, not having a slot for a storage card could be a problem because it doesn`t take long to fill up an 8 Gig hard drive.

The MP3 player is not bad with pretty basic functions and the in-ear headphones worked well, although I would recommend a descent set if you listen to music often.

The camera isn`t the best around , being only 5 megapixels it’s not up to its rivals but they are good enough to post online, after all that’s really what camera phones are used for these days.

The camera and volume buttons on the side aren`t great, whilst using the camera I wasn`t sure if I had pressed it down or not, then the flash came on sporadically which was a bit confusing, images are a bit washed out.

The Nokia Lumia 710 is a nice phone to look at, slim with a nice glassy edge to edge facia.

The screen does get grubby after a while though, another good feature is that you can use windows office on here, so emailing is easy and with active email sync, reading all your e-mail accounts on one page is also very handy.

Making calls is easy (after all it is phone) with a large display, or simply click on a friend and it gives you a number of text or calling options.

Basically it does what other smart phones can do but simpler. You can choose from variety of ringtones or upload your own. Unfortunately you can`t customise your email alerts which is a shame, all this has to be done via pc running Microsoft’s ZUNE software, a bit like iTunes.

It’s ideal for adding/removing images or music and can be used to upgrade the phone`s Operating system even though Nokia will not be updating existing windows 7 users to windows 8 when it comes out, they have promised to keep updating the existing OS.

Texting is OK on this handset, it would have been nice to enlarge the keyboard as the keys are a bit on the small side and somewhat annoying until you get used to it, the predictive text works well and does speed things up.

With apps like Nokia Maps included you won`t get lost ever again, (maybe run over as you are looking at your sat nav phone) my favourite is the find my phone app once registered you can go to your pc and type in a password, it then tells you the location of the phone, you can even get it to ring or wipe the data on it if it has been stolen.

What this phone does have is 1.4GHz processor; the same as is fitted in the more expensive Lumia 800, with this size CPU the phone is able to play better quality, and faster games and video.

There are plenty of Apps and games available from the www.microsoft.com/windowsphone, maybe not as many as its contemporaries but still plenty to choose from and cheaper.

As for some of the accessories on this phone the radio is probably the worst, fine if you only want to listen to two radio stations, the reception was awful and of no use what so ever.

Yet everything else on it works fine web browsing is fast and intuitive, video is a bit washed out but does the trick, stand by time is supposed to be 400 hours yet the more you use it the less power you will have, especially gaming.

Summary

The Nokia lumia 710 is a great phone, and if you’re a gamer the graphics are excellent for a phone of this price. OK it has its problems, not many though and as an entry level smart phone there isn`t many out there that can better it, especially if you’re not used to using one, the Nokia Lumia 710 is easy to use and great to look at.

There are plenty of offers out there at the moment for this phone so have a good look around

Nokia Lumia 710

Manufacturer: Nokia

5.0 megapixel camera

3.7” Display

7.6 Hours talk time

400 Hours Stand by

8 gigabyte storage

Mp3

Windows 7

Price: Varies from £99.00 - £200 (depending on retailer)