Nokia got a lot of things right with its first Windows Phone 7 smartphone, but for all its good points, the Lumia 800 was rather let down by a mediocre screen that gave text a distinctly fuzzy appearance.
Thankfully, that particular deficiency has been addressed for the new Lumia 710, although this seems to be an inadvertent result of its reduced specification rather than any deliberate design tweak.
Nokia is clearly following a particular design philosophy for its Lumia range and although the entry-level Lumia 710 has a more traditional smartphone construction than the mid-range Lumia 800, the two are still obviously related.
The Lumia 710 has almost the same dimensions as the Lumia 800 and the same bright blue matte case, at least on the models we reviewed other colours are available. The difference, however, is that the Lumia 700's plastic body is a traditional two-part design with a wraparound plastic back cover, rather than a single carved block of the stuff.
That back cover is also removable, as is the battery beneath it, which should make this an appealing Windows Phone 7 smartphone for anyone who's away from mains power for long spells.
The Lumia 710's 1300mAh battery is marginally smaller than the Lumia 800's, but despite both smartphones having the same processor, this made little difference to battery life in our tests. With the WP Bench battery benchmark, which keeps the screen on and hammers the processor, the Lumia 710 lasted for two hours and 20 minutes that's only 10 minutes less than the Lumia 800's time.
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