Nokia Lumia 710

Metro textual

The web browser, Internet Explorer 9, renders pages extremely quickly. However, this briskness is offset by the need for an extra tap for many common operations – punching in a new URL, changing tabs, navigating to a backwards or forwards. For more general tasks, the on-screen word correction is very handy and intuitive.

A range of wetsuit coloured backs are available to make it easier to spot these Nokias in the wild

After a few days it became apparent that no matter how good the Metro UI looks, I was using the phone much less frequently for reading. The layout makes poor use of the space available (three Tweets per screen!) and the sans serif font, while fine for signage, is human-unfriendly. Overall, the body text should be tweaked.

I shall expand on these thoughts in a companion piece. But I did wonder how much reviewers and analysts actually evaluate the platforms on which they opine: not much it at all, I suspect, or this would have been noted much more.

Verdict

File Windows Phone, in its current state, under: Great first impressions and shows great promise. Indeed, bargain hunters may be tempted to grab a Lumia 710 as a second phone, but there’s a long way to go. Some of the improvements, particularly for power consumption, need to be made urgently, and may deter the undecided. But if you're tempted, at least you can slot in another battery, which is its saving grace in this area. ®

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