Some Nokia Lumia 710 handsets have unlocked bootloaders?

In its excitement of wanting to become a force to be reckoned with again in the smartphone market particularly in the Windows Phone ecosystem, it looks like Nokia inadvertently let slip some Nokia Lumia 710 handsets with an unlocked QualComm bootloader as opposed to the locked Nokia version in a rush to flood the smartphone market with the said handset. The oversight of the Finnish smartphone manufacturer was discovered by biktor_gj over at XDA Developers and this means that these select Nokia Lumia 710 handsets can be easily loaded with custom ROMs.

Despite this oversight on Nokia’s part, most of the Nokia Lumia 710 handsets that hit the shelves still came with the manufacturer’s custom locked firmware. Even if you are lucky enough to have gotten your hands on one of the Nokia Lumia 710 handsets with an unlocked bootloader (even if you didn’t know it yet at that time), if you have at one point or the other used the Nokia Connection Suite to update your device in the past, chances are the unlocked bootloader have already been overwritten with an official version.

Should you want to know if you are among the lucky few to rock a Nokia Lumia 710 with an unlocked bootloader, all you need to do is turn your handset off and then press and hold the Volume Up and Power buttons simultaneously until the phone gives off s short vibration. The next thing you need to do is to hook the handset up to your computer and if comes up in disk mode with USB Mass Storage Device, consider yourself lucky because your Nokia Lumia 710 comes with an unlocked bootloader and in due time, you’ll get the chance to flash some fancy custom ROM onto your device. In fact, a custom ROM with Interop Unlock is already floating around in the internet so if you happen to be among the lucky ones with a Nokia Lumia 710 with an unlocked bootloader, you might want to try flashing this onto your device. Of course, be reminded of the risks involved such as turning your warranty to toast and / or bricking your phone and turning it into an expensive paper weight if you plan to go ahead and tinker with your Nokia Lumia 710.

For the uninitiated, the Nokia Lumia 710 runs Windows Phone 7.5 Mango for its operating system and this is powered by a QualComm MSM8255 SnapDragon chipset with 1.4 GHz Scorpion processor and 512 MB of RAM atop it. The device also comes with an internal memory, non-expandable that is, pegged at 8GB while its 3.7-inch TFT display has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels. In addition to that, the display of the Nokia Lumia 710 is made from Gorilla Glass which makes it resistant to scratches and is powered by Nokia’s proprietary ClearBlack Display technology that makes it comparable to those stunning AMOLED displays we find in Samsung handsets. The Nokia Lumia 710 only has one shooter to bring to the table and it is a rear-facing 5MP camera with LED flash and is capable of 720p video capture at 30 frames per second.  Buy the Nokia Lumia 710.