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Nokia Lumia 610 review Lowest of the kind

The Nokia Lumia 610 is a simple phone with a simple goal: make the Windows Phone experience even more accessible. This basic smartphone is priced to not gather dust on the shelves and you can guess the features arent exactly top notch. But this is where the Lumia 610 is perhaps more fortunate than its expensive siblings. It must be harder for the likes of the Lumia 800 and Lumia 900 to get away with some of the platforms limitations.

The Lumia 610 looks a lot like the 710 on the outside, but has less-capable hardware inside. Now, that means even tighter limits on what the phone can do but its an entry-level smartphone after all. Focusing on what you get rather than on whats missing is the right attitude in this price range. And thats exactly what were going to do in the following lists.

Key features

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
Quad-band 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.7 Mbps HSUPA support
3.7" 65K-color LCD capacitive touchscreen of WVGA resolution
5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, VGA video @30fps
Windows Phone 7.5 OS (Refresh)
800MHz ARM Cortex-A5 CPU, Adreno 200 GPU, 256MB of RAM, Qualcomm MSM7227A chipset
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
GPS receiver with A-GPS support and free lifetime voice-guided navigation
Digital compass
8GB on-board storage
Active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic
Built-in accelerometer and proximity sensor
Standard 3.5 mm audio jack; FM Radio with RDS
microUSB port
Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP and EDR
Deep and coherent SNS integration throughout the interface
Main disadvantages

Some apps are incompatible due to low RAM
No Flash or Silverlight support in browser
No USB mass storage (Zune-only file management and sync)
No video calls and no front-facing camera
No memory card slot
microSIM card slot
No native DivX/XviD support, videos have to be Zune-transcoded
No HD recording or playback, due to hardware limitations
Will probably be stuck on this Windows Phone version for good
The long list of cons might ring a lot of bells and, if you are familiar with the Windows Phone OS you already know most of them are platform-wide limitations. On the other hand, familiarity with the OS most probably takes you off the list of potential Lumia 610 targets. Its rather a beginners smartphone, one that will introduce you to WP7 if youre ready to move on from feature phones.

Users with no smartphone experience are less likely to be concerned about the amount of RAM. In fact, people with some experience with older Symbian will see nothing wrong with 256MB. What it actually means is theres no HD video recording and playback. Some apps, like Skype and Angry Birds will not run due to insufficient memory, but you should be getting the same solid set of features for the most part.


Nokia Lumia 610 live pictures

What the Lumia 610 offers is a low-cost Windows Phone experience. It seems perfectly suited for emerging markets, where Nokia should have built a strong customer base of potential first-time smartphone users by now. Carriers on the old continent will most certainly be interested in the Lumia 610, too, and if you think an entry-level Windows smartphone is worth a look, this review will hopefully help you know it better.