Valentine's Day 2012 Gift Deal: Free Nokia Lumia 710 Smartphone from Engadget

Tech blog Engadget is giving away five Nokia Lumia 710 smartphones for Valentine's Day 2012, and if you want the gift deal, here's what you need to do. Go to the Engadget Web site and leave a comment on the contest page. Winners will be chosen at random, and it doesn't matter what you post in the comments. The catch is, you have to be 18, and the phones only run on the T-Mobile network, service not included. So, you get a free phone and then pony up for the data plan and contract.

Additionally, the contest is only for U.S. residents, but that makes sense because it's T-Mobile. If you get picked, you'll be notified by e-mail and you have three days to respond and grab your new Valentine's Day present. The contest goes until 11:59 p.m. EST on Valentine's Day. Nokia's Lumia 710 was the Finnish company's first Microsoft-powered smartphone made for the U.S. audience, and it normally sells for $40 with a new two-year contract. It has 3.7-inch ClearBlack display, five megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash, Gorilla Glass, eight gigabytes of internal storage, a 1.4GHz Qualcomm processor, 512 megabytes of memory, micro-USB port and enough battery power for about seven hours of talk time.

It would make a great gift, and if your Valentine is a student, it's doubly good because of the Microsoft system under the hood. Windows Phone 7 runs all the Office programs right on the Lumia 710, so you can edit documents on the go. It also can connect to Xbox Live for mobile gaming. There's even 25 gigabytes worth of free cloud storage through Microsoft's SkyDrive app. There aren't as many apps available in the Windows Phone Marketplace as in the App Store, but the 50,000 available now grows by the day.

Let us know in the comments if you entered the contest and who you plan to give your new Lumia 710 to.