Vodafone 710 (Vodafone V710)

Available now
5th October 2006

The Vodafone 710 is an astonishingly dull 3G phone. As the name suggest, this is strictly a Vodafone-only affair, and other carriers won't exactly have any sleepless nights over this particular phone.

Perhaps we are being cruel - but there's nothing in the technical specification of the Vodafone 710 that is inspiring - it's a 3G phone with a 176x220 pixel display, 1.3 megapixel camera and mini-SD removable memory. There's an MP3 player, Bluetooth, a web browser and email client and the Vodafone 710 comes in at a reasonable 99 grams. It's a fairly smart looking handset, and it looks like it's not going to be expensive either. There's a 64Mb memory card in the box too.

Here's something interesting though. In the Mobile Gazette office we recently downloaded Defcon from Introversion software. It's only €14 a copy and it's a fun game of Global Thermonuclear War, reminiscent of the classic 1980s move WarGames. How is this relevant to the Vodafone 710? It isn't. It's just that Defcon is about 100 times more exciting than this particular handset.

Errr.. actually there is something slightly interesting about the Vodafone 710 which is that it's made by Huawei Mobile of China, and it's the first time we've seen a Huawei handset launched as a mainstream European phone.

It's a big step backwards from the likes of the quite wonderful Sharp 903 and 902 handsets that Vodafone have had exclusive deals on in the past. The Vodafone 710 is simply a cheap device from a third-tier Chinese manufacturer which will probably be perfectly acceptable as a cheap 3G phone, but you have to question Vodafone's commitment to the 3G platform when this is the sort of thing they churn out.

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