Comparison : Nokia Lumia 800 vs Nokia Lumia 710

Nokia has gotten the HTC bug. In other words, Nokia is fragmenting its product line for no real reason. HTC was notorious for this – HTC Sensation, then the Sensation XL and the Sensation XE – to give an example. Nokia Lumia 800 and Nokia Lumia 710 are part of Nokia’s confused strategy. If there’s one thing which every smartphone maker has to learn from Apple, then it is this: Keep your product line simple.

Is there really a need for both Nokia Lumia 800 and Nokia Lumia 710? The straight answer is no. But if you thought there is a need for both the phones, then it is important that you know what’s the difference between the two. Here we have laid out the key differences.

Shorter version:

Nokia Lumia 800 has a slightly better screen, a better camera, a better battery life, extra memory than Nokia Lumia 710. Of course Lumia 800 will be priced higher than Lumia 710.

And now to the longer version.

Form factor: Screen, Weight, Colors and Dimensions

Nokia Lumia 800 and Nokia Lumia 710 share the same screen size of 3.7 inches. Lumia 800 comes with a AMOLED screen of Corning’s Gorilla Glass, Lumia 710 comes with a TFT Capacitive touch screen. Though Lumia 710 has the Corning Gorilla Glass security its TFT touch screen puts it behind Lumia 800’s AMOLED. I guess that’s how it was supposed to work out.

Lumia 800 (142g) is a little heavier than Lumia 710 (12.5g). In other dimensions like height, width and thickness Lumia 800 scores slightly better points. While neither of the phones are competing with the 7 mm thickness of Motorola Razr, Lumia 800 is 12.1 mm thick whereas Lumia 710 is 12.5 mm thick.

The form factor is subjective and you can’t really get a good measure of how things are until you hold one of these in your hands.

Lumia 800 comes in 3 colors- Black, Cyan and Magenta.

Lumia 710 comes with changeable back covers of Black, White, Cyan, Fuchsia and Yellow. Lumia 710 front comes in Black and White.

Processor, RAM and Memory

Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 share the same processor: 1.4 GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon processor. Both are powered by Adreno 205 GPU. Both the phones have 512 MB RAM.

On-board memory is where there is a subtle difference. Lumia 800 comes with 16 GB memory and Lumia 710 comes with 8 GB memory. The memory is not expandable. And the reason this is a subtle difference is because of the increased reliance on cloud services.

Camera, Video

 

Camera is where the biggest difference lies. Lumia 800 comes with an 8 MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics autofocus and dual LED flash. Lumia 710 comes with 5 MP camera and LED flash.

The 8 MP camera puts Lumia 800 in the league of iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S2. While the number of megapixels doesn’t necessarily translate to a better picture, Lumia 800 clearly has an edge.

Both the phones can capture 720p videos at 30fps.

Battery and Price

Lumia 800 comes with a 1450mAh battery and Lumia 710 comes with a 1300 mAh battery. What does it mean?

On a 3G network Lumia 800 gives you 9.5 hours of talk time and the Lumia 710 gives you 7 hours 40 minutes of talk time. On a 2G network Lumia 800 fares even better. It gives a whopping 13 hours of talk time but Lumia 710 gives just 6 hours and 50 minutes of talk time. That’s a glaring difference and I don’t have a reason to explain why.

Price is a key factor for both the phones. That’s a rhetorical statement. Nokia hasn’t announced the India price for these phones. Lumia 800 is rumored to be priced at 29K. Lumia 710 would obviously be less than 29K and probably in the 22K range.

I almost forgot. Both Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 run Windows Mango OS.

Verdict : I never really understood fragmentation. But that’s just me. Between Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 there should have been just one device. That is Lumia 800 for me. Unless Lumia 710 is priced in the sub-20K range, I don’t see it being picked up by the customers.

If you are a Nokia fan with a contrarian view (looking for a third front other than iOS and Android) then you can’t go wrong with Lumia 800.

Update :  Don’t read too much into the word Comparison  in the title because that’s just to get your attention. This isn’t a peer comparison in a way we have compared  LG Optimus Pro and Motorola Fire or Samsung Galaxy S2 and iPhone 4S or Samsung Galaxy S2, HTC Sensation and LG Optimus X2. It’s a way to find out the key differences between these two Nokia phones.