Nokia Lumia 710
The Nokia Lumia 710 is for those who don’t want to spend more than Rs 20,000 on a phone, but still want a premium device.
Nokia Lumia 710: The phone has a good build quality.
The 710 is thicker and heavier than its nearest competitor, the Samsung Omnia W, but the build quality still feels excellent. Three hardware keys —Return, Windows and Search— accompany the 3.7-inch display.
Flip the phone over and there is the 5 MP camera with flash towards the top, and the hands-free speaker at the bottom. The volume buttons and the camera key are on the right side panel, while the 3.5mm headphone jack is on the top along with the power key and the microUSB slot. The plastic used is of high quality, and we didn’t feel any rough edges at all.
The 710 has the same hardware specs as the Samsung Omnia W. The Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 processor clocking at 1.4 GHz powers it, and is paired with 512 MB RAM. The performance of Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) on this hardware is excellent.
The display on the Lumia 710 is a simple liquid crystal display (LCD), while the Omnia W comes with Super AMOLED display. The Omnia W takes the lead in terms of brightness and contrast, the 710 has deeper blacks and the text feels crisper.
Windows Phone OS’s Metro user interface (UI) is possibly the most interesting. To see all apps, just flick open the screen on the right. Now you can vertically scroll through all the apps that are installed on the phone. The UI offers very limited options in terms of personalization. The changes you can make are limited to re-arranging tiles, changing accent colour and the colour of the background and changing the lock-screen image.
The 5 MP camera takes decent images in bright light, but noisy images when it becomes slightly darker. Even on a sunny day, pictures lack sharpness. The ability to take 720p HD videos seems more like something designed for the spec sheets, than for actual performance.
If iOS has Apple’s iPod feature built-in, this one has Microsoft’s Zune. We still haven’t seen a more beautiful presentation of the music collection on any portable device till now.
Surprisingly, the Lumia 710 has a smaller battery than the Omnia W. And it shows—this one will completely discharge in just over a day, under medium-heavy use.
The Lumia 710, more so when considering the price, should be on your shortlist if you are considering a Windows Phone 7 handset. It’s neck to neck with the Omnia W in terms of overall performance. The Omnia W is lighter and slimmer than the 710. But the 710 has much better display than the Omnia. It’s a tough choice, but in the end it ultimately boils down to your preference of the design, brand and colour, etc.
Specifications
Platform: Windows Phone 7.5
CPU: 1.4 GHz
RAM: 512 MB
Screen: 3.7 inches
Storage: 8 GB internal
Camera: 5 MP
Battery: 1,300 mAh
Price: Rs 15,999
Ratings*
Features: 7
Performance: 7.5
Build Quality: 7.5
Value for Money: 8
Total: 7.5
*Ratings out of 10
Amazon Kindle Touch
Amazon recently sent a mail to its customers giving them news many have been waiting for. The Kindle Touch now ships internationally, and although it lacks the worldwide free 3G of the more expensive Kindle Keyboard, it’s still an excellent option.
Amazon Kindle Touch: It can store around 3,000 books.
The Kindle Touch is slightly heavier than the basic Kindle (available now for $109, or around Rs 5,340), but is considerably less bulky than the Kindle Keyboard. It has 4 GB built-in storage —Amazon says that is good for about 3,000 books. Amazon also saves to the cloud so even if you delete a book, you can still re-download it for no charge. Any bookmarks and notes that you make will also remain in place, even for cloud saves. The Kindle is also loaded with an experimental Web browser that is able to load most text-heavy pages just fine.
With all the Kindle devices till now, a lot of book lovers missed the feel of actually turning a page. The Kindle Touch brings that back, to a huge extent. Amazon has divided the fields on the display very well—tap anywhere in the wide margin on the right side to flip to the next page, or tap anywhere in the thin left margin to flip to the previous page. Alternatively, you can just swipe on the screen like you would swipe a page in a book.
Amazon claims a battery life of about two months, with an hour of reading daily. We still haven’t been able to drain the battery on our Kindle Touch. It has been with us for two weeks, and despite a couple of hours of reading daily, the battery is slightly above 50%. It had come out of the box with about 60% charge.
For someone who already has a Kindle 3, the Touch isn’t an enticing enough upgrade. But for someone who is looking to buy their first e-book reader, then the Touch is the smartest choice at the moment.
Specifications
Display: 6-inch E-ink, capacitive touch screen with multi-touch
Connection type: Wi-Fi (3G optional)
Add-ons: Experimental Web browser, music player
Price: $139 (Wi-Fi only), doesn’t include shipping charges.
Ratings
Features: 7
Performance: 8
Build Quality: 8.5
Value for Money: 8.5
Total: 8
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