RIGHT ON THE MONEY By None on 22 Jan, 2012
A much awaited price cut has given Nokia Lumia 710 a prospect to be one of the best sellers. A 1.4ghz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8255 chipset, 512 mb ram, 3.7” screen with WVGA resolution, the list goes on. Lumia 710 has many off... erings to surprise you with a price tag of around 15.5k. On the Software side, Windows Phone Mango may win many hearts with its simplistic interface, which may not be as versatile as, say, Android, but is ridiculously fluid, and stays that at all times. nnPros:n1. 1.4ghz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8255 chipset coupled with 512 mb ram provide a buttery smooth experience. It is very close to what you will get even on the costliest windows phone.n2. 3.7” LCD ClearBlack display with WVGA resolution provides crisp bright colors. The overall contrast is good.n3. Video Recording offers good resolution and colors, bit rate is quite high.n4. 8gb on board storage (At this price, it is excellent).n5. Free life-time voice guided navigation.nnCons:n1. Disappointing battery life. Turning off multi-tasking may improve the battery life, but it isn’t the most pleasing option. With moderate usage, it may not even last a full day.n2. Disastrous audio quality. The frequency response is way off (something you simply can’t associate with modern day phones), intermodulation distortion is too high.n3. The other cons include the limitations of Windows Phone OS. No expandable storage, no Bluetooth file transfer, no DivX/XviD support out of the box, over-dependence on Zune.nnCompetition:nYes, some shortcomings are a little too much to be ignored (What was wrong with the audio quality). But battery life may not be comparatively very good in some competing android devices either. What you definitely get with Nokia Lumia 710 is a total commitment by Nokia-Microsoft to make this ecosystem as strong as possible. And what used to come at an appalling 20k, is now available at three-fourths the price. Considering that, Lumia 710 may be a very tempting package at this point of time. nnSamsung Omnia W I8350 is a close competitor, with similar hardware. It even brings a SuperAMOLED screen and metallic back, all at a very slight increase in price. But you will be giving up on SatNav and Nokia Drive.nHTC radar is all about good finish, but it comes with “only” 1 ghz processor and a higher price. If price is not an issue, you can go all the way up to Nokia Lumia 800 which flaunts a very hot polycarbonate uni-body, better battery and camera. nHowever, there is ample competition outside Windows Phone. Sony Ericcson Xperia Ray and Xperia Neo V are very tempting android alternatives with 1 ghz processors, 512 mb ram and planned upgrades to ICS. A better camera or a bigger screen should tilt your preferences to the former or later.nNokia offers some Symbian phones too. Nokia 701 and 700 come with very similar hardware. More importantly, Nokia Belle has been in news for good things.nHowever all phones mentioned do have a higher price than Nokia 710 which could well be the defining factor when many young people finalize on a model to buy.
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