Nokia Lumia 710, The Windows Phone that Could Change It All

We at Bright Side of News* have been some of Windows Phone’s most outspoken critics. Many of us used Windows Mobile back in the Windows Mobile 5 and 6 days and once word about Windows Phone’s lack of freedom became public we were less than thrilled. Since then, we tended to have a poor opinion of Windows Phone given that our early experiences were not great. The OS was still buggy and had some significant limitations which made the phone practically unusable in our opinion. Not to mention the fact that the OS was much more closed than its previous iterations which were a custom firmware writer’s dream. As a result of the closing of the Windows Mobile’s open ecosystem, many of the custom ROM writers switched over to Android and gave that community the boost it needed.

Now, we enter the latest phase of Windows Phone: Nokia has become Microsoft’s premier partner for Windows Phone. In addition, Nokia has put out some very solid and sleek devices, possibly the nicest that Windows Phone has seen to date. Most of Nokia’s recovery strategy in the global market is primarily based upon their Windows Phone smartphone strategy. Right now, Nokia has three Lumia devices available, the 800, 710 and 610 with the 900 coming very soon.

The reason why the Nokia Lumia 710 is so interesting to us is not only because it sits somewhat in the middle of the range of Nokia’s Windows Phone devices, but rather because of its price relative to performance. Right now, on T-Mobile, the Lumia 710 is selling for $0.00 with a contract. What this means to Nokia is that they have more smartphones being subsidized by the carriers, which in turn generally means that they will be capable of achieving better sales in the US market where they have generally floundered. In the US market, devices that sell for a certain price and then end up going to free on contract generally see a spike in sales. This is because most people really have no desire to actually pay for their phones, and ‘free’ is always the most attractive price. As such, the Lumia 710 delivers a full-fledged Windows Phone smartphone experience for the awesome price of $0.00.

In this review we will be evaluating the Nokia Lumia 710 and taking a brief look at the Windows Phone operating system, as this is our first formal review of the mobile OS.