Nokia Lumia 710

The Nokia Lumia 710 is the next offering into the Windows Phone arena from Nokia, following the release of the Nokia Lumia 800 late last year.

The first thing you observe when comparing the Nokia Lumia 710 with its older handset sibling is that the Nokia Lumia 710 looks and feels cheaper. And it is. Where the Nokia Lumia 800 SIM-free price is around £430, the Nokia Lumia 710 is probable to cost a somewhat more economical £300.

The cause the Nokia Lumia 710 feels like a cheaper handset is partly down to the weight, coming in at a sprightly 125.5g against the Nokia Lumia 800's 142g. On paper this seems like a good thing, but the smartphone is too light somehow, making it feel unsubstantial compared to its bigger brother.

In addition to this, the Nokia Lumia 710 screen is recessed slightly, and the evolution from the front face of the phone to the sides feels quite angular. The result of this styling is that the phone design doesn't look or feel as rational as the Nokia Lumia 800.

Also we found the separate physical buttons for Back, Home and Search on the Nokia Lumia 710 look and feel cheaper than the important styling on the Nokia Lumia 800, and we caught the bottom left of the screen when going to press the Back button a number of times.

One major benefit over the Nokia Lumia 800 is that the rear cover is removable, since the Nokia Lumia 710 comes with a disposable battery. Based on the battery life of the Nokia Lumia 800, the ability to carry a spare battery and swap out may well prove tremendously useful.

With the Nokia Lumia 710, Nokia has returned to the days of the changeable covers - rear at least - to further personalise your mobile phone. Although we're all for changeable covers and phone personalisation, removing the cover feels like something we should be doing as little as potential when we saw the exposed pads onto which the side buttons press.

The Nokia Lumia 710 and Nokia Lumia 800 share the similar screen size (3.7 inches) and resolution (480 x 800p), although the Nokia Lumia 710 is limited to a ClearBlack TFT compared to the ClearBlack AMOLED on the Nokia Lumia 800.

They also both use Gorilla Glass, making them rather bomb-proof. The similarities continue to the processor, with both phones using the 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm MSM8255T Scorpion/Snapdragon chip.

Both phones have a 5MP camera and 8GB of internal memory. But the HTC Radar has a slightly larger 3.8-inch screen and a substantially lower powered processor - a 1GHz single-core Qualcomm MSM8255 Scorpion/Snapdragon.