UK users might have looked at the Nokia Lumia 900 and their counterparts in the US with an element of envy. When it was launched at CES last month in Las Vegas, the Finnish manufacturer said the device was going to be an American exclusive. Then came a hint that actually the follow up to the Nokia Lumia 800 will be heading to other markets. Now US consumers have had to satisfy themselves with news that the 710 will be the first of the new Nokia phones to arrive, waiting until the summer for its big brother.

The Lumia 710 comes with a ClearBlack display and 3.7 inch touchscreen. Users can chop and change the design, swapping covers and changing the home screen so personalisation is a big draw. Along with the Nokia Lumia 900 it runs Windows Phone 7.5 mango offering greater integration with social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook, as well as making it easier to interact with friends and colleagues with all messaging via SMS, Chat or email under one banner. It has a 5 megapixel camera with an LED flash and HD video. It also comes with 512 MB of RAM and 8 GB of on-board memory.

In comparison the Nokia Lumia 900 is larger than the 710 and the 800 with a 4.3 inch AMOLED display. Its rear facing camera has Carl Zeiss optics and a wide angled lens. For a high end device it has a modest 512 MB of RAM and a single core 1.4 GHz Scorpion processor, which might run a little slow for those at the top end of the smartphone market looking for dual-core as standard. What should be remembered though is that Windows Phone is a lot less demanding on hardware than its Android competitor. The Lumia 900 will also be 4G enabled – which is more exciting for American audiences as 4G networks have yet to be implemented in many other markets.

Nokia fans will be able to get hold of Lumia 710 phone contracts from £15.50 a month. Its operating system will be a big draw as, even though sales of the Lumia 800 might not have been on the same level as its competitors at Apple and Samsung, it did draw plaudits for a user-friendly live tile interface that is intuitive and works well. Social media fans in particular will enjoy the ability to keep up to date on what friends and family are doing online in one simple place. Personalisation with different covers may feel a little kitsch but it is a nice feature and it emphasises the impressive build quality and new-look youthful feeling design Nokia is going for in terms of its Lumia range. Changeable battery covers was something that Nokia used to feature a lot on its phones several years back and there may be many people who miss this option with the current mandatory black, and occasionally white, phone designs.

The Lumia 900 is the nest big smartphone from the Finnish manufacturer and while the 710 may satisfy the lower end of the smartphone market whether the 900 can keep up with the major front-runners in the market remains to be seen. It is not expected to be released until June, by which stage many competitors like Samsung, HTC and Sony will have, most likely, released major smartphones themselves at World Mobile Congress, the huge trade show in the spring. Yet a UK release date has not even been confirmed by Nokia. Carphone Warehouse inadvertently published a web page suggesting UK consumers would be able to pre-order with the device becoming available in the UK in the summer but it has been removed and nothing further has come from Nokia.

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