Nokia Lumia 710 in hands-on pictures

The Nokia Lumia 710 is one of the pair of new Nokia blowers running the Windows Phone operating system. We battled the crowds at Nokia World to bring you some hand-on pictures and the full force of our first impressions.

The Lumia 710 is the younger brother of the Lumia 800 we've been eyeing up, but is aiming more for the cheaper end of the market, so you can hopefully get a taste of Windows Phone without paying the Earth.

A 3.7-inch screen takes up much of the front of the phone. It's not an AMOLED screen as you'll find on the 800, so you won't get the same rich viewing experience, but it seemed pretty bright and clear in our hands on. There are physical buttons underneath it too for navigating around and taking you back to the home screen when you're stuck in an app.

There's a single-core 1.4GHz processor tucked away inside it, which made operation smooth and perfectly pleasant. We'd expect it to be able to handle high-res movies, fairly power-hungry games and open apps without an annoying delay.

The Windows Phone operating system offers an attractive and intuitive interface full of bright, colourful tiles that show live information such as the weather or news. You can also group your friends into a tile that will update with live statuses and posts on Facebook, Twitter and the like.

It doesn't have the same well-stocked app stores of iOS or Android -- in fact, it's positively barren in comparison -- but as more phones use the OS and it becomes more popular, developers will have a much bigger incentive to spent their time making apps for Windows Phone devices. Right now though, there's a pretty meagre selection.

On the back of the 710 you'll find a 5-megapixel camera. It's not pushing the 8-megapixel sensor found on the 800 -- nor does it have the Carl Zeiss optics or f/2.2 aperture -- but that's pretty much to be expected on a lower-end phone.

It's not a bad piece of kit, and we're looking forward to seeing what Nokia is willing to deliver in a cheaper package when we get one in for a full review. In the meantime, check out our gallery of pictures.