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
Lumia 710 - Software Preload
The Lumia 710 we were sampled is headed for T-Mobile, and as a result comes with some software preloads. Among those are T-Mobile TV, T-Mobile My Account, TeleNav GPS Nav, Nokia Drive, and an ESPN app.
Thankfully unlike Android 2.x, you aren’t stuck with these preloads for the life of the device or until you root and remove, as WP7 allows for easy uninstallation of any of these preloaded applications.
Obviously T-Mobile My Account is somewhat useful for managing your account information and checking use, but besides the preloaded Nokia applications, I find almost all preloads annoying. Obviously on a device with just 8 GB of NAND keeping this to a minimum is important.
Nokia’s Apps
The Lumia 710 doesn’t come with all of Nokia’s software portfolio installed out of the box, just Nokia Drive. It’s somewhat puzzling that T-Mobile decided to also include TeleNav GPS Nav since Nokia Drive is free on the Lumia series and provides the same turn-by-turn navigation features, but for whatever reason that’s the way things are.
I talked about the Nokia application portfolio in the Lumia 800 review at some length if you’re interested in more details. Suffice it to say that Nokia Drive does a nice job getting the job done, and has gotten more and more speedy with each update since I first saw it. On first launch, Nokia Drive fetches maps and voices over WiFi, so you’ll have to launch this before setting out for some driving.
The interesting thing about the 710 is that the Marketplace application now has a “Nokia Collection” pivot which is home to all the Nokia applications. Maps, Contacts Transfer, and a few others are all present here. Nokia Music and Drive aren’t included here, though Drive is still updated through the marketplace like on the 800. I wager depending on what carrier you’re getting the 710 on, the combination of preload and Nokia preinstalled applications will change.
Obviously the Nokia 710 comes with WP7.5 Mango, specifically build 7740 (7.19.7740.16) on the device we tested.
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augustofretes - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
You lied to us :( XDKTGiang - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
The Nokia Luma710 isn't the "midrange" product for Nokia. The 800 is the "midrange" product and they haven't announced their high end product for the US yet. I do agree that Nokia doesn't make too much sense right now but at the same time I don't exactly own a successful phone manufacturing company.Brian Klug - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
That's true, I guess I should state that at present those labels are relative - only the 710 and 800 are announced. (Though we'll see what happens at CES...)-Brian
KTGiang - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
Yup, you did some good editing for better accuracy. Only people who are up on their Windows Phones news knows that Nokia actually gave a statement saying they didn't release the Lumia 800 in the US because they wanted to make sure they released a proper high end phone to compete in the market over here. Also, they wanted to establish a base and buzz in the rest of the world with the Lumia 800 where they still have phones in the hands of their consumers.name99 - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
You get judged by what you SHIP not by what you plan one day to ship.You know what's a truly awesome phone, way better than ALL this crap Anand is talking about --- the iPhone 7! Man, that thing makes a Lumia 710 look like a Nokia 6235 candybar.
jjj - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
In the US it's all about the high end,the consumer is quite a different beast from most other places and to be fair the price difference is pretty small.Why T-Mo and the 710? Nokia most likely has better relations with T-Mo than with the other US carriers so it was easier to bring the device to market fast and they didn't wanted to give a higeher end device to the smallest of the big 4 or maybe nobody was interesting in heavily subsidizing the 800.As for the device itself i'm not sure it's a better buy than the HTC Radar 4G.
For the ecosystem,it's hard to have faith in Microsoft,they are slow and afraid to innovate,the Windows brand doesn't have the best image and the first steps towards an OS unification are not great.Win 8 might be Vista 2 for traditional PC users.If they don't let us disable the Metro UI on desktops, i know i won't upgrade to Win8,don't need the extra bloat. They'll keep trying to buy their way in,just like they are doing with Bing ( terrible search engine BTW and i use it often) but they need to do better to actually succeed.
dagamer34 - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
Afraid to innovate? Have you SEEN Windows 8??jjj - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
have you,or you just have a vague idea about what it is?Nataku - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
u really just sound like u have a grudge towards microsoft now... i've used the dev preview, i admit its not that great for keyboard/mouse use but definitely works wonders once you get touch screen, but thats only the dev preview and ms said they would do something about it (otoh, the new task manager is great)now about innovation, xbox was definitely innovative, wp7/zune dont get enough credit they are some of the the most innovative product as well, sky drive is fantastic now with the new update and fix they have in place (still hate the 100mb file limit though...)
Microsoft isn't the monstrosity it used to be, they actually listen to customers now and do things right, give them another chance
Samus - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
still a shame the Venue Pro is the ONLY WP7 with a keyboard...