Nokia Lumia 610 - Feather in cap for Nokia

Nokia Lumia 610

On the surface, the Lumia 610 is yet another Windows Phone device. It retains the basic design of almost all Windows Phone – a touchscreen slate design, three soft keys, a dedicated two-stop camera button and 5MP camera. The glossy plastic body with tacky chrome band doesn’t scream premium, but you wouldn’t expect that in a device at this price range anyway. While the design is as generic as it gets, at least it is an improvement over the Lumia 710, which takes the award for ugliest Windows Phone. Still, despite being a cheap device, the Lumia 610 is solidly built. It will be available in four separate colours – cyan, magenta, white and black.

The 3.7″ 480×800 display is the same size as found on its more expensive Lumia siblings, the 710 and 800. With a pixel density of 252 ppi, it is one of the sharpest screen I have seen on an entry level smartphone. But in order to get the price down, Nokia had to cut out the much regarded Clear Black Display filter. The lack of CBD layer resulted in a display that is highly reflective. In fact you could almost replace a mirror with this.

The biggest difference between the Lumia 610 and 710 are the inclusion of a much slower clocked speed processor and less RAM. The single core 800MHz Qualcomm processor and 256MB RAM might sound like a huge compromise to performance, but it isn’t. The Lumia 610 feels snappy at all times, thanks to the hardware accelerated UI. After all, Windows Phone was already optimised to run well on the Adreno 200 GPU found inside the Lumia 610 – it is the same GPU used on all first generation Windows Phone devices. Compared to the HTC Wildfire S, which struggles to runs on the same SoC, the Lumia 610 would fly. Not bad for an entry level smartphone with a 480×800 display to power.