Nokia Lumia 710 Review - T-Mobile's Nokia WP7
by Brian Klug on January 5, 2012 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Nokia
- Mobile
- WP7
- Lumia 710
Cellular
Like all MSM8255 devices, the Lumia 710 uses Qualcomm’s onboard combination GSM/EDGE/WCDMA HSPA+ baseband for cellular connectivity. That means HSDPA category 10 on the downlink and HSUPA category 6 on the uplink. Of course, the fact that these HSDPA/HSUPA categories are nothing special at all right now for WCDMA means nothing to T-Mobile, who gladly replaces the “3G” indicator with “4G”.
| Nokia Lumia 710 - Network Support | |||||
| GSM/EDGE Support | 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz | ||||
| RM-803 (Europe) WCDMA Support | 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz (I, II, VIII) | ||||
| RM-809 (T-Mobile USA) WCDMA Support | 850 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100 MHz (I, II, IV, V) | ||||
| Baseband Hardware | QCT MDM8255 w/QTR8615 | ||||
| HSPA+ Categories | HSDPA 14.4 (Cat.10) / HSUPA 5.76 (Cat.6) | ||||
The other noteworthy thing is that the Lumia 710 is also subdivided into two different revisions which carry different WCDMA bands - we were sampled the RM-809 which includes T-Mobile AWS (1700/2100) support. What’s interesting about the RM-809 is that the device also has support for PCS 1900 and Cellular 850, which which means it would work on AT&T, though our device wasn’t unlocked and thus we weren’t able to try. The FCC approval is in place, however. The other Lumia 710 is geared for international support with bands 1, 2, and 8.
I had no issues at all with the Lumia 710 on cellular - connectivity is excellent. Unfortunately I couldn’t get Field Test on the 710 working to read out dBm and check for deathgrip (for some reason it loads indefinitely), however I didn’t see anything odd in my time with the device. In addition I ran speedtests and saw throughput on par with what I expect out of T-Mobile’s HSPA+, though none of the speedtest applications on WP7 allow me to export data and make a nice histogram or two.
WiFi
WLAN connectivity on the Lumia 710 is the standard fare for almost all smartphones these days - 802.11b/g/n (2.4 GHz) single stream. On 20 MHz WLAN channels, that means a physical rate of 72 Mbps, which is precisely what I saw the Lumia 710 authenticate as. I wasn’t able to completely verify, but it seems like a safe bet that BCM4329 is lurking inside. In addition, range signal performance are spot on with where they should be, I saw no issues in my testing.
In our throughput test I saw speeds that almost matched the Lumia 800 (which isn’t surprising at all).
Speakerphone
I spoke a lot about how the Lumia 800’s speakerphone was way too quiet. If the Lumia 800 is one side of the spectrum, the 710 is on the complete other side, as its speakerphone is eardrum-shatteringly loud. In our sound datalogger test, the Lumia 710 placed literally at the top of the ranks for volume, so if you absolutely need speakerphone volume the 710 is an excellent pick. Earpiece volume is also subjectively top notch.
In the call quality department I did the usual thing and recorded samples from the 710 on line in, placed a few calls, and tested noise rejection. The 710, like all WCDMA devices, sounds great to me, though GSM call quality is a bit reduced.
The Lumia 710 does do noise rejection, which has worked its way down from the $200 “superphone” category all the way to the $50 category over the last year or so. The device does common mode noise rejection and some fancy DSP to isolate and cancel noise, and though I’m not sure what IP is in place here (possibly Qualcomm’s Fluence since I don’t see a discrete solution on the board) it does a good job in our test.
GPS
The Lumia 710 unsurprisingly uses the GPS/GLONASS (GNSS) system onboard MSM8255 and accompanied by QTR8615 which we’ve seen numerous times before. Though WP7 doesn’t have API access to NMEA data so we can see SNR from individual satellites, the Lumia 710 does seem to get a GPS lock speedily enough even in some tough environments. In both the maps application and Nokia Drive I had no issues getting a GPS lock in under 5 seconds and keeping the lock for the duration of navigation.
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french toast - Friday, January 6, 2012 - link
We really need some exciting hardware and up to date specs..i love the look of wp7 but i REFUSE to be palmed off with 18month out of date hardware, when i can get something 5x as powerfull for the same price.Yes i have read all the countless arguements about wp7 being 'processor friendly' and being optimised for the user experience..good for them.
But it seems that they have used that rather good selling point to skimp away from the expense of decent screens, features, and processing power.
Yes it does run better than buggy android and caparitivly crap hardware..fantastic but it would run a bit more smoother, have better battery life, and would enable some apps and games that are worthy to hold that xbox moniker..at the moment all i see is crappy indie ports...i was expecting something MUCH better than this.
Still, im a massive fan of nokia, and i love my xbox 360..so my hope is that microkia get there act togther and release something worth buying..
a5cent - Saturday, January 7, 2012 - link
I understand not wanting to pay the same price for inferior hardware... who would?However, it's currently a fact that you can only have ONE of the following:
a) A restrictive hardware policy, enabling MS to push all their updates to all WP7 owners in a timely fashion
b) A flexible hardware policy, that allows manufacturers to arbitrarily improve their devices, enabling the WP7 platform compete with android in terms of hardware specs.
Microsoft has chosen (a). I think 90% of a smartphone's value is delivered by the software. Considering that the overwhelming majority of people don't want to bother with rooting their devices and flashing ROMs, I agree with MS that (a) is the right position to take.
As a result, the WP community will always go through long stretches were their hardware is inferior to the best Android deice. With WP8 we will get our short moment in the hardware lime-lite, only to fall behind again shortly thereafter. Going with WP means we accept this and get over it.
At some point the advances in smartphone technology will slow, and even before that many will realize the hardware is only a means-to-an-end. They will realize timely software updates are much more important... and wonder how we could ever like a system like android, that evolves so slowly and only gets one update every year or so.
PubFiction - Sunday, January 8, 2012 - link
Yep it is this and lack of choice. Sprint only has a single WP7 device and it lost my dollar because the screen was lower resolution and it was a slower device than the Evo 3D which I picked.Also when all your phones never come out on top in benchmarks no one is going to be interested.
Wolfpup - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
I wish they'd devote 2-4x the bandwidth at least so calls actually sounded decent.binqq - Friday, January 6, 2012 - link
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burntham77 - Saturday, January 7, 2012 - link
These are neat phones, but I still have not found a WP7 phone that could replace my Android phone and Zune. Someday, perhaps. Someday.jnemesh - Monday, January 16, 2012 - link
" if in two years we don't live in a world where there is mindblowing integration between my Windows PC, my Xbox 360 and my Windows Phone - then the platform deserves to fail. Microsoft will have squandered its biggest advantage. "Two years? Wow...that is overly generous! That would mean 3 1/2 years from introduction to mainstream success, swimming upstream against Apple and Google! I think its worse than that. If we dont see SOME measure of success from THIS generation of Nokia WP7 handsets, including the 710, the 800 and the "flagship" 900, they are sunk! They have been trolling around 1 to 2 percent market share, and FALLING. So if they dont get it together quickly, they will NEVER gain the momentum necessary to even remain a player! Hell, even Palm managed 5% at their height, and the only way Microsoft can report those numbers is when they lump in legacy Windows Mobile phones with them!
Personally, I feel that the phone UI is hideous, and the functionality of the phone is SERIOUSLY lacking in comparison to their Android counterparts. If I want "tiles", I can put them on my Android handset...but if I want to do anything outside of what Microsoft wants their users to do with WP7, I am out of luck! Too limited, too outdated, and too ugly to live! Better luck next time, guys...the Kin2 aint happening!
Timz - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
You can benchmark the camera's color reproduction simply by checking them with deltae; http://delt.ae/ , its a 100% free tool for color checker (amongst other stuff) evaluation.