Finland’s Nokia Corp. got a lot of attention at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the giant showcase for new gadgets, but most of the buzz went to the wrong phone.
A lot of the talk was about Nokia’s most sophisticated new smartphone, the Lumia 900. Yet, just a few feet away was a smaller, simpler Nokia phone that may matter a whole lot more: the Lumia 710.
The Lumia 710 is a very good smartphone - sleek, fast, cheap, and designed for Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone 7 operating system. Some say the phone is a Hail Mary pass both for Nokia, a company that’s been largely frozen out of the US phone market, and Microsoft, whose Windows Phone software has been scorned by consumers. Maybe so, but it could work.
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Amazon.com made a similar play, and won. It sold millions of Kindle Fire tablet computers, making it the first such device to pose a real challenge to Apple Inc.’s iPad. It’s not that the Kindle Fire is better than the iPad; but it is a good-enough alternative, and it’s $300 less.
Windows Phone 7 ought to have a better shot. It’s not merely an adequate substitute for Apple’s iPhone software or the industry-leading Android phone software from Google Inc. It is first-rate, a worthy rival to the iPhone and decisively better than Android.
And yet, people refuse to buy it. In the past three months, only 1.4 percent of Americans who bought a smartphone picked one that runs Windows Phone.
It’s hard to believe a superphone like the Lumia 900 will change that. Microsoft’s best bet is to go downmarket, with a device like the 710: cheap enough for the 50 percent of Americans who don’t have smartphones yet, and good enough to win them over.
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You can get the 710 right now at your local T-Mobile store for $49.95 with a two-year contract and a $50 mail-in rebate, but sign up at Costco.com, and you can get it for just a penny.
About the same size as the iPhone 4G, but a bit thicker, the Lumia 710 has the usual Windows Phone controls, including the camera button for shooting pictures instantly, even when the phone has gone to sleep. The front controls on this phone use pushbuttons instead of more elegant touchscreen icons - a cost-saving measure I can live with. You get 8 gigabytes of data storage for apps and files, and no more. Like the iPhone, the 710 has no memory card slot.
As with other Windows Phones, the 710 lacks a high-end, dual-core processor, but I didn’t miss it. The software runs like lightning. Web pages reveal themselves almost before you’re ready, and apps launch nearly instantly.
Granted, there are only about 50,000 Windows Phone apps. Users of the iPhone get 10 times that many. Then again, the greatest hits are there - Windows Phone versions of Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Foursquare, and, of course, Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds.
Nokia has swiped one of Google’s better ideas by introducing Nokia Drive, a Windows Phone app that delivers turn-by-turn driving directions free of charge. But beware: While Google’s navigation app works right out of the box, Nokia made me download about 4 gigabytes of files to set it up. Installing it used up most of the Lumia’s memory bank, leaving little room for music, photos, or other apps. Besides, I had to hook up to a Wi-Fi hotspot, because it was too heavy a lift for T-Mobile’s so-called 4G data network (actually an upgraded 3G service, no matter what the company’s advertisements say). T-Mobile’s 4G service may not be nearly as fast as the 4G LTE services of Verizon Wireless or AT&T Inc., but the Lumia 710 downloaded data at 4 million to 6 million bits per second, adequate for everyday e-mailing and Web surfing.
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This new Nokia phone won’t win over iPhone lovers, though it might attract a few disgruntled Android users, tired of the constant software crashes and malware-infected apps. But the real opportunity for Nokia and Microsoft is at the entry level. Millions of Americans still don’t own a smartphone. Lots of them would consider a Windows Phone if given a good enough reason. And here it is.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.