Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition review: Lead the way

Camera is an unimpressive 2MP shooter

The Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition packs a minimal 2MP fixed focus-camera. It snaps photos at 1600x1200 pixels resolution and we wouldn’t use them unless we really had no other option.

Typical Series 40, the camera settings are rather limited but reasonable given the mid-range spot. The available settings include white balance, resolution, and various effects. Sequence shots and shooting in both portrait and landscape mode are also among the available options.

The camera user interface

Quite expectedly, the image quality is poor. Images are quite noisy, not that 2 megapixels are enough to capture any fine detail. After snapping a shot, the camera takes a few seconds before it’s ready for another shot. All in all, you could probably use it for contact photos or general note taking but not much more than that.

Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition camera sample photos

Video recording: why did they bother?

The Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition is rather unimpressive in video capture too – it manages QVGA@15fps, which is not surprising for a 2-series phone. We guess that sort of video is only good for an occasional MMS.

The camcorder interface

Here’s a sample video, just for thoroughness’ sake.

Connectivity is low-end, but the GPS receiver is good

The Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition is hardly a connectivity master. It offers quad-band GSM/EDGE connectivity and Bluetooth – nothing that can’t be found on just about every phone.

However, there are some positive aspects as well – the 2710 Navigation Edition has the standard 3.5mm audio jack and a hot-swappable microSD card. This scores some points for the connectivity, but the lack of USB charging is annoying.

Anyway, as its name suggests the Nokia 2710 stakes a lot on the built-in GPS receiver as its main feature. We’ll cover its performance in the Ovi Maps section of the review. But as a spoiler – it’s quite good.

Opera Mini is the browser of choice

The default browser on the Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition is Opera Mini 4.2. It’s a tradition for S40 phones, but there’s a new version available, which offers some new goodies – such as multiple tabs, among others.

The way Mini works is the page is rendered on Opera's servers and sent into a lighter format to the device, with the images compressed. While this somewhat spoils the quality, on a small screen (as most low-power devices that rely on the Mini have) you can't tell the difference.

The difference in image quality aside, the compression really saves on data charges. For example, GSMArena.com clocks in at about 370KB through Nokia’s S40 browser and just under 70KB through Opera Mini.

This saves on data and more importantly speeds things up – the Nokia 2710 relies on EDGE, so having to download much less data means faster browsing. Opera’s rendering algorithm is very good and there are very rarely any problems with mis-rendered pages.

The Opera Mini web browser is well familiar