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
Performance
Unfortunately, the majority of benchmarks that usually grace our smartphone reviews don’t yet have WP7 ports or analogs, but there are a still a number of comparisons we can make. To start, the browser-based performance metrics give a good picture within the Windows Phone ecosystem, and likewise with WPbench, created by one of our own readers and on the marketplace.
This current refresh of WP7 devices continues to be based around exclusively Qualcomm SoCs, and the Lumia 710 is no exception. Both the 710 and 800 are based around Qualcomm’s MSM8255 single core S2 snapdragon at 1.4 GHz with Adreno 205 graphics at the core and dual channel LPDDR2 memory interfaces. This is a 45nm part we’ve seen and explored numerous times before, and as a refresher includes the HSPA+ 14.4 baseband onboard. At this point, there really only are three different SoC and clock configurations which WP7 has to deal with - 1.0 GHz QSD8x50 Snapdragon (65nm single core with Adreno 200 graphics), 800 MHz - 1.0 GHz MSM8x55/MSM7x30 Snapdragon (45nm single core with Adreno 205 graphics), and now a higher clocked 1.4 GHz MSM8x55 Snapdragon.
Those three configurations essentially tell the complete story of Windows Phone’s SoC evolution since launch, which are clearly outlined in their chassis requirements. I spent a paragraph in the Lumia 800 talking about why benchmarking will become even more important in the Windows Phone 7 / Windows 8 ecosystem as this opens up to more SoCs (and ST-E per Nokia’s influence), and how a huge number of benchmark players are busily porting the same Android/iOS benchmarks to the platform. Eventually WP7 will make the jump to dual-core as well.
Anyhow, onward to the numbers. First is sunspider, which we’ve been using for a long while and recently changed from 0.9 to 0.9.1 with. As a result, I’ve had to re-run devices since the numbers aren’t directly comparable. WP7.5 brings a much improved javascript engine which gives it a big boost in scores. I’ve managed to hang onto the HTC Surround (1.0 GHz QSD8250) which we’ve included as well.
I sound like I’m on repeat, but unsurprisingly we see the same performance we did out of the Lumia 800 (again both are using 1.4 GHz MSM8255) and a big jump thanks to running WP7.5. The new combination of IE9’s Trident 5.0 and Chakra JavaScript JIT engine also helps narrow the gap between iOS and Android in the JavaScript department. Obviously it can’t come close to matching the phones up there with dual core SoCs, however.
Browsermark hasn’t changed or forced us to re-run things, so we have comparison numbers from WP7 devices pre-update that show how much difference there is in the browser department in WP7.5.
Again here things are almost exactly on par with the Lumia 800, unsurprisingly. Unfortunately if you use the Nexus S (1.0 GHz S5PC110 “Hummingbird” with a Cortex A8 CPU) as a comparison point (vs the 1.4 GHz Scorpion inside MSM8255) you can see how the WP7 team needs to eek some more performance out to bring things totally up to parity. I should note that Nexus S number is for 2.3.6 as well, 4.0.3 puts things even further out of reach.
For system benchmarking on WP7.5 we have WPBench, which was created by one of our own readers. The benchmark reports a total score in addition to three sub-scores for CPU, memory, and GPU.
| WPBench Comparison | |||
| HTC Surround (1.0 GHz QSD8250) | Nokia Lumia 800 (1.4 GHz MSM8255) | Nokia Lumia 710 (1.4 GHz MSM8255) | |
| Total Score | 61.58 | 91.14 | 92.85 |
| Result Screenshot |
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The rest of WP7.5’s UI in first party applications and the main navigation areas is very smooth, admittedly. It’s here that you really see the reasoning for many people arguing that WP7.5 doesn’t need to make the jump to dual-core very soon. Silverlight applications can occasionally stutter, however, it’s hard to fully codify the differences between first-party (native code) and third-party (Silverlight) performance until we get better tools.
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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.