review

Video Review: Nokia Lumia 710 vs HTC Radar

January 25, 2012 | By Surur

Yesterday’s review of the ZTE Tania vs the HTC Radar did not go too well, after the video made a disappearing act.

Hopefully Allaboutphones.nl’s video review of the HTC Radar vs the Nokia Lumia 710 will last a bit longer.

Both devices are around 300 Euro on contract. They find the devices relatively well matched, but found the faster processor and better software package, including Nokia Drive and Nokia Music, pulling that handset ahead in the race.

Via Allaboutphones.nl.

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Nokia Lumia 710 – Software and Battery Life Review

January 22, 2012 | By andrewbares

How does the Nokia Lumia 710 stack up against the HTC Radar in terms of software and battery life? Find out by watching the video above and reading our review!

Software

The Lumia 710 is your typical Windows Phone… it has a butter smooth, crash-free, and elegant operating system. What makes Nokia phones unique is their Nokia Collection of apps. When you buy any Nokia phone, you get Nokia Drive (Turn-by-turn GPS navigation), Nokia Maps, ESPN, and more, all for free.

Nokia Drive is extremely accurate, as seen in our driving demo of the app. It’s still not fully-functional compared to other GPS navigation software (lacks some features and doesn’t work completely offline), but for the price of free it’s a nice bonus.

Nokia Maps is also a nice addition, since it is typically more accurate and up-to-date than Bing Maps (in my city, that is).

HTC phones used to have an advantage in that HTC provided a free flashlight app, but now thanks to developer Gregerly, we have a free flashlight app that uses your LED flash and doesn’t flicker!

The Lumia 710 on T-Mobile is lacking internet sharing (maybe an update will unlock it?) and video chat (no front-facing camera), but the Lumia 710 does have a compass and gyroscope, which means you can use augmented reality apps.

The Lumia 710 runs on Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, which, in my opinion, directly compares to the iPhone’s ease of use (miles above Android). In summary, you should buy Windows Phone if you want a phone that works and doesn’t require constant rebooting. WP7′s app Marketplace is lacking some major apps right now, but Microsoft and Nokia are greatly committed to bringing all the apps possible to Windows Phone, so that shouldn’t be an issue for much longer.

Battery Life

The Lumia 710′s battery should last you through your day, only requiring a charge when you’re sleeping. In my real-world use, my Radar seemed to last a little longer than the Lumia, which makes sense because the Lumia only has a 1300 mAh battery while the Radar has a larger 1520 mAh battery.

I performed two battery tests on each phone. In the first test, I played music on both phones for 2 hours, with volume on 15 out of 30, phones in airplane mode, screens off, using the same pair of headphones. After two hours, the Radar drained from 100% to 99% battery, while the Lumia drained to 93%. If you factor in battery sizes, the Radar gets about 7.5 minutes per 1 mAh of battery, while the Lumia only got about 1.5 minutes per mAh of battery.

The Lumia and Radar both have a second-generation snapdragon processor, but the Lumia’s is clocked at 1.4 GHz while the Radar is at a slower 1.0 GHz, which could be giving the Radar the extra boost in battery life.

My second test involved playing the same movie on both phones for an hour, with brightness on medium, volume on 30/30 using headphones, and with the phones in airplane mode. This test confirmed the audio test results, since the Lumia drained down to 75% while the Radar only drained to 90%. If the Radar and Lumia both had 1520 mAh batteries, that would mean that the Radar could play movies for 10 hours while the Lumia would only be able to play for 4.7 hours.

These tests aren’t scientific by any means, but they do seem to confirm my guess that the Radar lasts longer than the Lumia. However, the Lumia’s battery life isn’t bad by any means and is acceptable by smartphone standards!

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Nokia Lumia 710 – Camera Review

January 20, 2012 | By andrewbares

How does the Lumia 710′s camera and video capabilities compare with the HTC Radar? Read and watch our review to find out!


Lumia 710	HTC Radar

Pictures


Lumia 710	HTC Radar

The Lumia 710 easily defeats the HTC Radar. The Lumia manages to capture far more accurate colors in pictures, as can be seen in the video and in the pictures above. The HTC Radar consistently has a blue tint to everything. Detail-wise, both phones are equal.

Indoors, the Lumia also wins. When taking dark pictures, the Lumia will shine its LED flash to focus the picture first, and then it will actually take the picture. The Radar skips this step and therefore the Radar’s pictures are often out of focus. The colors of the Lumia’s pictures are also once again far more accurate compared to the overly-bright Radar. My only complaint is that the Lumia always has darker edges on the pictures with a flash, but otherwise the pictures are clearly better.

Videos

The Lumia 710 once again easily wins against the HTC Radar. The biggest issue with HTC phones is that you cannot record decent videos indoors, since their frame rate is terrible in low-lighting conditions. The Lumia is butter-smooth even when it’s extremely dark.

The detail on videos from the Lumia is also significantly better. You can zoom in using the camera app and things still look crisp!

HTC better take note, because Nokia is kicking their you-know-what in terms of camera quality.

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Nokia Lumia 710 – Call and Sound Quality Review

January 19, 2012 | By andrewbares

The Lumia 710 unfortunately falls short of the HTC Radar in both call quality and sound quality.

Call Quality

On my Nokia Lumia 710 from T-Mobile, recipients of my phone calls complained about the quality of the sound. To them, I sounded muffled, distorted, quiet, and simply not as good as what they consider normal. I typically use my HTC Radar, and my parents could instantly notice the significant drop in quality when I called them from the Lumia 710.

When I had my parents use the Lumia so that I could experience the call quality myself, I too noticed that everything simply sounded worse than the HTC Radar. The Lumia 710 sounded like a bad cell phone, while the HTC Radar was quite clear and close to landline quality.

Using the Lumia 710 on speakerphone also received complaints, since the sound quality was once again worse. The HTC Radar’s speakerphone faired much better. However, everything sounds fine for the person who is using the Lumia… the speakerphone is loud, the earpiece is loud, and the quality sounds good from there.

So far I haven’t seen any other users experiencing the call quality issue, but I doubt many people will recognize the poor call quality since it actually requires the person on the other end of the phone to say something… Everything sounds perfect from the point of view of the Lumia owner.

Overall, the HTC Radar easily wins in call quality.

Sound Quality

The speakers on the Lumia 710 play music at a very similar volume to the HTC Radar… they’re decently loud, but could be a little louder if anything. The Lumia and Radar’s speakers also sound pretty equal in terms of sound quality. If anything, the Radar sounds slightly better and less distorted at higher volumes.

Through a pair of headphones, the Radar was able to play music significantly louder (23/30 volume on the Radar was about the same as Max volume on the Lumia). The Radar also sounded crisper and less distorted. Plus, with the HTC Radar, you can use HTC’s Sound Enhancer app to tweak your sound, which once again gives HTC an extra boost to victory. For my review purposes, I left the Sound Enhancer disabled, and the Radar was still slightly better.

Overall, the Lumia 710 lacks some extra volume through the headphones, but otherwise sounds good. Dedicated MP3 players will still sound better, but for a phone the Lumia sounds good.

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Nokia Lumia 710 reviewed against the HTC Radar 4G

January 19, 2012 | By Surur

PhoneDog have posted this head to head review of two mid-range Windows Phone 7 handsets, the Nokia Lumia 710 vs the HTC Radar 4G.

See Part 2 after the break.

Continue reading →

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Nokia Lumia 710 – Hardware Review

January 17, 2012 | By andrewbares

The Lumia 710 is currently T-Mobile’s most powerful Windows Phone in terms of specs. It has a 1.4 GHz second-generation single-core Snapdragon processor, a gyroscope, Corning Gorilla Glass, and a compass.

However, the Lumia 710 lacks a front-facing camera and is of course limited with 8 GB of storage space. It also doesn’t look as sexy as the HTC Radar, nor does it feel as expensive as the Radar.

The screen on the 710 is a nicely sized 3.7″ ClearBlack LCD display, which is perfect for texting with one hand. Colors are possibly a little more vivid on the 710 when compared to the S-LCD on the HTC Radar, but the ClearBlack display doesn’t preform much better out in the sunlight compared to the Radar. A big disadvantage to the Lumia 710 is that there’s a very noticeable black border around the screen, whereas on the HTC Radar, the screen perfectly touches the rest of the phone seamlessly.

Instead of touch-sensitive buttons, the Lumia 710 has physical buttons on the front of the phone, which prevent you from accidentally hitting the back key while playing games on the phone. My only complaint is that these buttons look quite cheap when lit up at night time.

The camera button can be a little tricky, because there’s hardly any travel space between pressing the button halfway down to focus it and actually pressing it all the way down to take the picture. Otherwise, the volume buttons and power buttons feel nice.

The Lumia 710 has a 5 MP camera and a single-LED flash, but we’ll go into the quality of the camera later in our review section dedicated to the camera.

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Lumia 710 Teaser Video – Review Coming Soon

January 16, 2012 | By andrewbares

Enjoy the eye candy above, showing of the Lumia 710′s sexier side.

We’ll start posting our review of the Lumia 710 over the next few weeks. For now, check out our excellent review of the HTC Radar!

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Nokia Drive: In-Car Hands On Test (Video)

January 13, 2012 | By andrewbares

In the video above, we tested the Nokia Drive app in the streets of America. Watch the video to see for yourself how the app performs and how the voice instructions sound.

Overall, I highly recommend the Nokia Drive app. The voice instructions are just as good as any standalone GPS unit like Garmin or TomTom, and the tracking is extremely accurate. The app also supports Mango multitasking and resumes your navigation almost instantly. Plus, the maps can be downloaded to your phone for offline use.

However, there are some negatives…

Can’t run under the lockscreen (receiving voice instructions would be great, but it doesn’t work)
Doesn’t fully work offline (you can’t search for desinations)
Searching for an address is complicated (you have to add the city after the address)
Doesn’t have a POI list for nearby gas stations/etc.

So Nokia Drive could definitely use some improvements. I’m extremely glad that I have an in-dash navigation unit on my car, because using Nokia Drive still lacks features all true navigation units have.

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T-Mobile Nokia Lumia 710 reviewed

January 5, 2012 | By Surur

MobileTechReview have posted their as usual very thorough review of the Nokia Lumia 710.

They were pretty happy with the handset, especially when the low price is taken into consideration, and concluded:

There’s a lot to like in Nokia’s first US Windows Phone. The bargain price belies a solid set of features; quick performance and an elegant though not thin design. Call quality is excellent, the camera takes good photos and the phone is fast. Gaming is fluid and fun, the Zune music experience is as ever enjoyable and streaming video plays well over T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network. If you’re looking for an easy to pocket smartphone that’s wallet-friendly, the Nokia Lumia 710 is worth a look. It beats the HTC Radar 4G Windows Phone on T-Mobile for both price and specs, and it’s a lovely introduction to Windows Phone. We do wish the front buttons weren’t so maddeningly difficult to press and that the Lumia 710 had the mobile hotspot feature, but those are our only two complaints.

Read their full review here.

The handset will go on sale on the 11th January 2011 on T-Mobile USA and pre-orders are open now.

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App Review: Bee Social

December 26, 2011 | By andrewbares

As you can see, that honeycomb interface is absolutely useless

Bee Social is the first gay social application on the Windows Phone marketplace.

While it is the first, it definitely isn’t the best. There are a ton of things that need to be improved. Bee Social allows you to post your profile, complete with images and location, to the public. It also lets you view other people’s profile.

However, the app lacks a search ability, so you cannot find people whatsoever. All you can do is click on people based on their profile picture… that’s if they even have one. There’s no way of finding people with common interests, common ethnicity, etc.

If you do happen to find someone you’re interested in, you can send them a message which uses push notifications. The app also supposedly has a live tile, but the tile didn’t seem to work for me at all. Also, there’s no way to view all past conversations, so it is impossible to find someone you talked with before, especially since you cannot search for people due to the lack of a search feature.

There are numerous other issues, including some quirky interface designs and weird glitches like selecting “Caucasian” but then it changes to “Black”.

qrcode Nevertheless, the developers seem dedicated to this application and have already released an update adding the push notifications, and it seems like they will continue to improve the app.

You can find Bee Social in the marketplace for FREE.

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Samsung Focus Flash reviewed

December 21, 2011 | By Surur

Mobiletechreview have posted this video review of the Samsung Focus Flash, the US version of the Samsung Omnia W.

They note the smaller device has its attractions, including being more pocketable, higher pixel density on the screen and of course being much cheaper. They also find the device has good build quality and does not feel flimsy, an advance on the original Samsung Focus and Focus S.

App Review: Paper Snow

December 20, 2011 | By andrewbares

If you’re looking to create classic paper snowflakes but don’t have paper and scissors, Paper Snow is a digital alternative!

With Paper Snow, you are simply given a sheet of paper already folded correctly, and you can choose what shapes to cut out of it. Then, click the button to unfold it and you can place your new snowflake on one of the existing backgrounds or a background of your choice.

The app works quite well. The control scheme is decently accurate, thanks to the ability to touch and hold to get a precision cursor. You can create whatever shapes you want, and even click to undo your changes in case you make a mistake.

Finally, the choice of backgrounds is really great. Each image looks perfect, and they all complement the snowflake very well. You can even share your completed image via Twitter or Facebook, or save it to your device for later sharing.

Overall, the app has a fast interface and works well. The only complaint could be that it always saves “created by Paper Snow” text at the bottom of the saved image, which is slightly annoying when you paid for an app. qrcode

Paper Snow is available in the Marketplace for $0.99 and has a free trial that allows you to create but not save the snowflakes.

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Acer Allegro reviewed

December 17, 2011 | By Surur

in_the_box-1024x976

WP7.nl have reviewed the new Acer Allegro, a low-end Windows Phone which sells for only 299.00 Euro without contract.

allegro_11 The handset appeared competent enough, being as fast and slick as all Windows Phone 7 handsets tend to be, and comes with useful extras such as a DLNA app.

The 1 Ghz, 8GB, 5 megapixel device is however also the very first completely devoid of a flash, and the camera is also nothing worth writing home about.

WP7.nl concludes:

Conclusion

Now in this second wave of Windows phones we see more budget units on the market, and it is nice to see that in the case of Windows Phone platform so no huge dent in the experience of using this OS. If you do not attach importance to a decent camera in your smartphone, then get you a competitive price an excellent smartphone into the house where not much to be noted.
It has some flaws such as hyper-sensitive camera button and the still very meagre 8GB of memory, but also are worth the money I think, and also the battery life is more than enough for your average busy day to help.

Pros

The Price!

Light weight and size

Like any WP 7.5 fast and reliable

DLNA

Cons

The camera quality

Sensitivity of touch screen

No camera flash

8GB Memory

Rating

Added together and taken in consideration that this is a fairly entry-level model, the Acer M310 Allegro gets me the number: 8

Read the full review for all the details here.

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