Nokia’s Lumia 710 is leading the phone maker’s Windows Phone 7 charge in the U.S. and is set to go on sale January 11 with T-Mobile. T-Mobile announced that the 710, the younger sibling to the Lumia 800, will sell for with a two-year contract and will ride atop its 4G network.
The launch of the 710 is the opening salvo for Nokia as it works to re-establish itself in the U.S. following its decision to adopt Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform. It might disappoint some users who are more anxious to see the Lumia 800, which has gotten positive reviews since it launched in Europe. But T-Mobile said the 710 fits with its strategy of targeting the 150 million Americans who have yet to buy their first smartphone.
“It’s been T-Mobile’s strategy to really upgrade folks who haven’t used a smartphone before to their first smartphone,” said Rhone Rarick, senior product manager for T-Mobile. “The barriers for that are really cost and intimidation of something too complex. From T-Mobile’s perspective we think Windows Phone is a great platform for those folks and from a hardware perspective we need to make certain things happen to get down to great price point of .”
The 710 offers a 3.7-inch WVGA display with a 1.4 GHz Snapdragon processor, 8 GB of storage and a 5 megapixel camera. It will be able to access speeds of 14.4 megabits per second on T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network. The T-Mobile version of the Lumia 710 will also get Netflix pre-loaded along with T-Mobile TV, a streaming video service. The Lumia 710 will join two other Windows Phone 7 devices, the HD7, T-Mobile’s first WP7 smartphone, and the HTC Radar 4G.
”The Nokia Lumia 710 is the perfect first-time smartphone: a well-designed product that delivers the most compelling Windows Phone experience in its price range and with access to great content and thousands of applications,” said Chris Weber, president, Nokia Americas in a statement. “This is the perfect first Nokia Lumia experience and the start of our re-entry into the U.S. smartphone market.”
The news was widely predicted after Nokia and T-Mobile sent out invitations to a Wednesday night event. An FCC filing also indicated the upcoming device would be the 710, removing any doubt about a possible Lumia 800 launch. But the choice of the 710 is still a disappointment in some ways considering the mounting pressure on Nokia to show that it’s serious about its new direction with Windows Phone 7. Our reviewer Kevin really enjoyed Nokia’s N9, the design the Lumia 800 is built off of.
Launching with T-Mobile would also seem to be weak choice for Nokia to debut its Windows Phone 7 line in the U.S. But it makes sense in that T-Mobile has been a strong supporter of Nokia for years. And Nokia is familiar with T-Mobile’s bands so preparing the devices for the network was relatively easy. But it still means that Nokia is starting with a struggling fourth-place carrier and will need to move quickly to roll out on the other operators. This is just the first step for Nokia but it will need to do a lot more to really make good on its bet on Windows Phone 7 in the U.S.
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This week, I got my hands on what may the hottest new Android handset; at least for now. I bought an unlocked Google Nexus at full price from a U.K. retailer and it arrived late in the week.
Where there may be gaps in the hardware, the software is excellent. Android 4.0 is the best attempt yet for any company to compete against Apple’s iOS 5 operating system. Google has refined the user interface by bringing the most positive aspects of Android 3.x (aka: Honeycomb) to the smartphone screen. Gmail’s revamp is superb as is the overall consistency of the entire user interface.
That up-front cost also gets you a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, 1 GB RAM, 16 GB internal storage with support for a 16 GB microSD card and an 8-megapixel camera. It also includes Beats Audio technology for improved sound. Not included on the Rezound, however, is Android 4.0; at least not when the phone launches on Nov. 14. Instead, the handset runs on the Gingerbread version of Android. HTC said the device is “Ice Cream Sandwich ready”, and that an update to Android 4.0 is expected early in 2012.
Between the Kindle Fire and the upcoming Nook Tablet, both products use Android 2.3 with a clean, heavily customized interface that completely hides Android. They also focus on the key, primary activities that most people want in a mobile device: Reading digital media, browsing the web, consuming video content, checking email and running a handful of popular applications found in curated application stores. And they both do this with a relatively low price and no expensive monthly mobile broadband contract: 9 and 9 for the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, respectively.
A research report from Strategy Analytics this past week suggests that Android tablets now hold more than a quarter of the tablet market and are quickly eating into Apple’s iPad sales. Upon closer inspection of the analysis, there are several discrepancies and interpretations that simply don’t make sense to me. I outlined some data points that indicate Android tablets still aren’t selling well.
I received an invite to a Samsung event on Oct. 11 which also has Google’s logo on it. Given the expected timing of Ice Cream Sandwich, it’s likely that the new operating system will be unveiled at the event on a Samsung device; perhaps the next Nexus phone.
The Kindle Fire is focused on Amazon’s content libraries for e-books, magazines, movies, television shows, and music. The Fire also comes with an email client and access to Amazon’s AppStore, which is a curated store of third-party Android applications. A Wi-Fi-only device, the Fire also has a hybrid web browser called Amazon Silk that works with Amazon Web Services to deliver content faster.
