You can sum up the Nokia Lumia 1020 in three words: 41, megapixel, camera.
It's
the Lumia 1020's high-octane shooter -- along with Nokia's custom
camera app -- that defines this next marquee Windows Phone 8 device, and
that gives mobile photographers a reason to salivate. In the 1020,
Nokia pushes the smartphone camera envelope with a combination of raw
image-capturing prowess and close-cropping capability that makes it one
of the most artistically able smartphone cameras we've tested.
Would
we ditch our point-and-shoot cameras and rely on the Lumia 1020
instead? For day-to-day and weekend events, absolutely; the 1020 is the
ultimate in convenience and approaches point-and-shoot quality. However,
based on our tests so far, Nokia still has a ways to go before it can
completely supplant the need for a higher-level standalone camera. We'd
take it away for the weekend, but wouldn't use it to shoot our kid's
first birthday.
Like the 16-megapixel Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom (reviewed), the Lumia 1020 is a niche device. Casual users may
not venture from automatic settings and may not notice much difference
in image quality unless they frequently crop photos tightly. Of course,
the S4 Zoom's optical zoom element gives the 1020 a run for its money
where that's concerned. However, overall, the 1020 offers often
technically better images in a much more portable chassis.
The
1020's $299.99 on-contract price with AT&T is too steep for casual
users, who can capture high-quality everyday stills and videos with
handsets that cost $200 or less. Serious photographers, however, will
appreciate the phone's genuine two-in-one capabilities. The Lumia 1020
also is sold globally.
Design and build
If you're familiar with the Lumia line of phones, the 1020
shouldn't look that foreign to you. Its curvature and overall shape are
reminiscent of the Lumia 920, and the smaller Lumia 820.
On
the face of the device, you'll find a 4.5-inch 1280 x 720 touchscreen
display. The left edge of the device, if you're facing the screen, is
clean and free of any buttons or ports. The right side has a volume
rocker, power/standby button and a dedicated camera button.
At
the base of the device you'll find the micro-USB charging port and
speaker/microphone. Up top, there is a SIM card tray, 3.5mm headset jack
and another microphone for noise cancellation.
The
back of the device is perhaps the most noticeable, with its large
camera module, Xenon flash, LED light and camera lens. It protrudes
enough from the device that it never lays flat on its back.
Even without the bulky camera, it's a substantial device as
far as modern smartphones go. It's not the slimmest or lightest by any
means, but it is somehow slightly slimmer and lighter than the Lumia
920.
To give you an idea of its dimensions, this Lumia
phone is 130.4mm tall, 71.4mm wide and 10.4mm thick and weighs 158
grams. As you can see, it's pretty wide and bloated by today's
smartphone standards.
Despite
its size and weight, you eventually get used to maneuvering your way
around the device. It's the camera that makes it tricky to hold. Do you
keep your fingers around it, or grip the phone right over the camera?
Decisions, decisions.
Our review model came in matte
black, and it's slightly more slippery than its glossy predecessors. The
Lumia 1020 also comes in yellow and white.
For
those of you interested in internals, there is a Qualcomm Snapdragon
dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 32GB on-board storage and a 2,000
mAh battery.
Key features
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
Quad-band 3G with 42 Mbps HSDPA and 5.7 Mbps HSUPA support
4.5" 16M-color PureMotionHD+ AMOLED capacitive touchscreen of 1280 x 768 pixels; Corning Gorilla Glass 3; Nokia Glance
41MP PureView sensor (38MP effective), 1/1.5" sensor size, 1.12µm,
ZEISS lens, Optical Image Stabilization, xenon and LED flashes
1080p@30fps video recording; 4x lossless digital zoom
32GB of inbuilt storage; 64GB Telefonica/O2 exclusive version
Active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic
Wireless charging with optional accessories
Built-in accelerometer, gyroscope and proximity sensor
Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
microUSB port
Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP and file transfers
SNS integration
Xbox Live integration and Xbox management
NFC support
Digital compass
Nokia Music
FM radio
Main disadvantages
Camera bump on the back
Shot-to-shot time of several seconds is painful
Screen has average sunlight legibility
Non-user-replaceable battery
Wireless charging needs an extra charging case to work
No microSD card slot
Relatively low battery capacity
No system-wide file manager
No lockscreen shortcuts
The new Amber update from Nokia (which integrates Windows Phone GDR2)
brings a number of new software features, including Lumia exclusives,
some of which are reserved for the platform's top brass. We're talking
about the Pro Camera app, of course, which allows manual focus (no other
phone on the market has that). The Glance screen and color tuning are
pretty awesome too, plus the old Nokia staple of free offline GPS
navigation.
Still, the camera cannot completely mask the fact that the Lumia 1020
is a little boring - it's almost the exact same device that we saw late
last year in the form of a Lumia 920. And Amber was more of a catchup
update than anything, it's GDR3 that will bring the high-res screen and
quad-core CPU support, though it won't bring these to existing products,
of course.
Nokia Lumia 1020 at ours
Can the Nokia Lumia 1020 help Windows Phone become the viable third
platform, alternative to both Apple and Google solutions, that Microsoft
wants it to be? Only one way to find out - look at the hardware, then
the software and then what we're really here to talk about, the camera.
Interface and performance
Windows Phone 8 resides inside the Nokia Lumia 1020, and if you've ever used Windows Phone before, it will be incredibly familiar to you.
This
version of Windows Phone 8 is called Amber, available only to Nokia
devices, and it's the latest version of the Microsoft platform. It adds a
few nifty new features to the software, but it's not a major overhaul
of the platform or anything.
You
can do new things with the Amber update like double tap the display to
turn it on, or flip your phone over to silence it. And if you love
customizing your device, there are a handful of new wallpapers added.
Otherwise,
it's just plain old Windows Phone 8. The live tile system works pretty
nicely to give you app updates and any other relevant info you might
want to see. The tiles are also customizable in size, so you can make
them large or small and arrange them into clusters when you shrink them
down.
If you swipe to the right from the main screen,
you'll see a list of all your apps, including the settings. It's a
mostly intuitive platform, but what it's seriously lacking is
third-party app support.
Most of the big-name apps are on
Windows Phone 8, like Facebook, Twitter, CNN, Foursquare and more. But
it's also missing incredibly popular apps like Instagram and Vine. This
lack of app support is what usually turns people off from adopting the
Windows Phone platform.
Another sorely missing feature is
a centralized notification system. With iOS and Android, you can see
all your notifications and updates in a drop-down pane, whereas Windows
Phone 8 leaves you guessing with the live tile system. If you get a
notification for an app that isn't immediately within view of the
display, you have to scroll around just to make sure you haven't missed
anything.
In terms of everyday performance, I experienced
no lag or hiccups at all. Well, other than the camera, but we're going
to cover that issue. Scrolling through the home page or within apps is
smooth, unlike the Android experience on some handsets. The apps and
tiles have cool animations, too, when you're opening or closing them or
watching your notifications.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 comes with the new Amber update preinstalled but
that doesn't change the user experience dramatically. It does add a few
features like Glance Screen, FM radio support and a new camera lens,
but the rest is barely different from the previous WP8 iterations.
The Nokia Glance Screen is one of the coolest features that the Amber
update brings along. It's a tribute to the MeeGo lockscreen (and
Symbian smartphones of old), where you can always see a clock and get
any missed events flagged right on the black standby screen. And just
like on the Nokia N9, you can wake up the phone with a double tap. The
Glance Screen feature leverages the properties of the AMOLED screen and
doesn't come with the cost of overly increased power consumption - only
the handful of pixels needed to display the clock and notifications are
actually lit up.
There are several options to the Glance Screen feature. It can either
be Timed (after a pre-set period of time it turns off the screen
completely to save battery) or always on, if you want to be able to see
it at all times. There's also a fourth option called Peek. It allows you
to wave over the phone's face to display the clock and notifications,
much like Samsung's Quick Glance.
Nokia Glance Screen options
A push on the unlock button reveals the lockscreen, which displays
the current time and date and shows calendar events, emails and missed
calls. Pushing the volume rocker in either direction will bring the
sound switch and music controls on top of the screen.
Swiping the lockscreen up unlocks the device or you can just press
and hold the camera shutter key to unlock the phone straight into the
camera app.
The lock screen • Music controls
There's a reasonable level of flexibility and functionality to the
lockscreen - the Live Apps service allows apps to display notifications
and images. You can set one app to display big notifications ("detailed
status") and up to five more apps to show less ("quick status").
The lockscreen wallpaper can also be controlled by apps - you can let
the music player replace the lockscreen image with the album art of the
currently playing track, or let one of the installed apps choose the
image (e.g. Bing's beautiful background images or photos from your
Facebook account).
The Modern UI is a vertical grid of Live tiles, which can be
reordered the way you like. Almost anything can be pinned to the
homescreen - apps, contacts, web pages and more.
The home screen and main menu
Windows Phone 8 lets you resize the live tiles. Upon a tap and hold,
you'll get an extra resize button, next to the unpin one. You can opt
between quarter, normal and double size. If you select the smallest one
though, the tile will be just a static icon (as is in the regular menu).
Resizing a tile
Most Live tiles display relevant info such as the current date,
pending calendar events, missed calls, unread emails and more (third
party apps do it too). The Marketplace tile displays the number of
updates available, while the Pictures tile is essentially a slideshow of
your photos. It's nice to have all that info always available
at-a-glance. You can look at them as homescreen widgets of sorts.
WP8 can do multitasking, though not with the level of user control
that Android allows. Apps not in the foreground are suspended, but the
OS has ways to take over and carry out the task for them (e.g. continue
playing music). If an app needs to run in the background (sat-nav
clients, messengers, etc.) it can. The WP offers both kind of
multi-tasking and it's up to developers to choose how their apps behave.
The multi-tasking interface
To switch between apps you press and hold the Back key. You'll get
thumbnail snapshots of the apps, ordered chronologically left to right.
You can scroll the list horizontally to select an app and a tap will
bring you back to your running or suspended app. You can't "kill" any of
those apps from here - to exit one you must bring it to front and use
the Back key to close it.
If you keep on hitting the back key, you will effectively be closing
all of the open apps one after the other, which is very unnatural,
especially when you've got an open Internet Explorer, which has to go
all the way back to the first loaded page before it closes. Overall,
it's best to let the OS manage the apps and not worry about which ones
are opened or closed.
Opening the settings menu displays two sets of options: like on the
start screen, you can swipe between System and Applications. System
covers all the settings you can think of like sounds, color theme,
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Accounts, etc. The Application settings let you
configure each app you have on the device.
We would've liked to see some kind of quick toggles in Windows Phone 8
to spare you the need to go all the way to the settings menu to enable
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and the likes.
Windows Phone 8 settings menu
Another feature we feel is missing is a place where you can see all
of your notifications from various apps. Live tiles manage to show
notifications from each app to some extent, but they don't really have
enough room for things like e-mail subject and such, while Android and
iOS notification areas do. Microsoft has confirmed that it's working on
just such a feature and that we should see it in a future update.
Settings for the phone's storage • customizing the system's color
Being a WP8 handset, the Nokia Lumia 1020 also supports voice
commands - you can dictate or have the phone read text out, you can
initiate searches and so on. Unfortunately, the Windows assistant is
still far behind the competition as far as recognition speed and
accuracy are concerned. Microsoft is said to be working on a new virtual
assistant dubbed Cortana, which should premiere with WP8.1 in US
English in early 2014 and before the end of 2014 for the rest of the
world (in 44 additional languages).
Microsoft TellMe
The Lumia 1020 comes with the Data Sense app, which shows you the
amount of data you've used. Both cellular and Wi-Fi traffic is accounted
for. There are different data limit types: one-time, monthly and
unlimited. The first two accept custom bandwidth limit values, while the
latter is applicable if you have an unlimited data plan, but would
still like to track your usage.
Data Sense is useful if you're on a limited data plan
Data Sense can also restrict the background data usage for all apps,
provided you're near a preset data limit. This will prevent some apps
from functioning properly, though.
Naturally, Nokia Lumia 1020 comes with a special feature for kids
conveniently dubbed Kids corner (HTC liked it well enough to put a
similar feature on the One). You can select the apps and the types of
media content that goes in and password-protect it, so you can safely
share your smartphone with your kids without worrying that they will
mess up your settings or access inappropriate content. When activated,
the Kids corner is accessible by swiping left of the lockscreen. If
you've secured it, your kids won't be able to return to your standard
lock and home screen without the password.
The Kid's corner
Microsoft is trying to appeal to business users too - a company can
create its own Hub where employees can find news, calendars and other
info relevant to their work. Companies can also create their own apps
that only employees can install.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 uses the Qualcomm MSM8960 chipset (1.5GHz
dual-core CPU, 2GB RAM and Adreno 225 GPU). That's as good as it gets
for WP8 devices at this stage, although Android competition has pulled
quite far ahead - the LTE-Advanced Galaxy S4 already broke the 2GHz
barrier and with a quad-core Krait processor at that.
A good thing is, the WP8 platform doesn't feel sluggish at all .
Navigation is fast and animations are nicely smooth and fluid. There are
places where you can feel a bit underpowered - loading heavier apps
like Drive+ takes longer than it should on a flagship device and using
the Camera Pro app to simultaneously capture full-res and downsampled
shots simultaneously extends the shot-to-shot time significantly.
Camera
The camera module in the Lumia 1020
is large. Every time you take the phone out, you'll notice it, and so
will everyone else around you. While the smartphone itself is smaller
than its predecessor, the Lumia 920, the camera makes it feel a little more unwieldy.
You'll
notice immediately that the camera features a Xenon flash, which has a
white balance closer to daylight or about 5,600-5,800 Kelvin, rather
than the blue hue given off by LED flash units you'd find on most
smartphones. The flash is powerful, too, so in the event you need to use
it, you'll have a good range of coverage. Nokia
also claims that the flash pulse is very fast, so that you can freeze
your subjects while retaining ambient light. While flash photography on a
smartphone is rarely ever pretty, it's not bad on the Lumia 1020.
When
you first turn on the phone, you'll be guided through the camera
software. Nokia takes you through all the controls and features of the
camera, and you're given tips on how to make the best of it.
This
tells us what Nokia really intends this phone for, and it's not
spending all day browsing the Internet. Once you're done with the
tutorial, you're ready to use the camera. Or the phone, if you'd like.
Nokia
Pro Cam is the default camera app, and it's intuitive enough if you
have any experience using a DSLR or compact camera. It offers more
control over focus and exposure than most smartphone cameras, but
Nokia's claim that many of these features are found only on a DSLR isn't
entirely true.
You can also ignore all those fancy features and just tap to focus and let the auto settings on the camera do the rest for you. Now,
just because the Lumia 1020 has a 41MP camera, it doesn't mean you're
going to be shooting 41MP photos all the time. By default, you're
storing 5MP oversampled photos, and I'll explain what that means later.
If you set the aspect ratio to 16:9, you'll be taking 34MP photos.
Change that to 4:3 and you're taking 38MP photos.
The 5MP
images are the ones you can share on Twitter, Facebook or via e-mail,
just as you would on any other smartphone. The big photos (34MP and
38MP) have to be transferred to a computer if you want to edit, print or
share them. The file size would be too large to share or transfer over
AT&T's network, and would it would kill your data plan limits in no
time.
Because of the massive resolution of the photos,
you can crop them down dramatically without suffering from too much loss
of quality. Alternatively, you get up to 3x lossless zoom while
shooting photos. That means you can zoom on your phone like you would on
other smartphones, but image quality and details won't degrade, and the
end result would still be a 5MP image. If you're interested in the way this works, you can read Nokia's white paper
on the 41MP PureView camera. But here's a quick version of how
oversampling works in this case: Nokia uses several pixels to act as one
pixel to gather more data and details in a photo. Instead of a 5MP
sensor capturing 5MP images, you have a 41MP sensor whose pixels act in
such a way that it captures 5MP images.
Yeah, it sounds
complicated and the white paper goes into more detail than I can explain
here, but all you need to know is that your 5MP photos will look a hell
of a lot better than, say, photos from a phone with a standard 5MP
camera (like the iPhone 4).
Now let's talk about actual
performance. Image quality on the Lumia 1020 is great for a smartphone,
let's just get that out of the way now. In auto mode, photos are
generally well exposed with good dynamic range. Details are clear and
sharp, and colors are accurate and rich. Most smartphone photos aside
from the iPhone tend to be a little flat out of the camera, but the
Lumia 1020 offers good color and contrast without having to edit photos.
Our
biggest gripe with the device is the camera lag from the time it takes
to fire up to taking actual photos and taking photos in rapid
succession.
The Lumia 1020's camera takes a whole second
longer than the iPhone 5 camera to get started. You may be thinking that
isn't much time at all, but it's long enough to miss a critical moment.
Because of the massive file size, it also takes a long time process and
save, which means you can't go shooting several photos at once. You
have to wait, then wait some more.
When you press the
shutter, whether it's the on-screen button or the physical one, the
camera takes a second to focus and to snap your photo. Sometimes it
works a little faster, sometimes it doesn't. This means action photos or
photos that require you to get a shot at just the right moment are
rarely ever going to work out. On the other hand, still life pictures
are just fine. You can take photos of your meals all day without worry.
The
camera is undoubtedly the selling feature for this phone. Otherwise,
it's just another Windows Phone device from Nokia. So the questions you
have to ask yourself are, "What am I going to do with these photos? Do I
really need 34 or 38 megapixels? How often do I crop my images? How
often do I zoom? Will it replace my point-and-shoot or DSLR?" Allow
us to answer that last question for you: no. While the Lumia 1020's
software offers you more control than your average smartphone camera, it
doesn't offer you the same control or flexibility as a point-and-shoot
camera or DSLR.
At worst, a point-and-shoot will let you
adjust your aperture for depth-of-field adjustments. The Lumia 1020
doesn't do that. Moreover, your average point-and-shoot camera has a
bigger imaging sensor than the 1020, and likely better optics, so image
quality, dynamic range and high ISO noise performance is better.
There's
also no sense in comparing the 1020 to a DSLR, because even the most
basic DSLR with a kit lens will outperform the 1020 in any situation.
At
this point, you may be asking yourself whether the Lumia 1020 will
replace any of your dedicated cameras. It won't. But what it will do is
give you better image quality than any other smartphone on the market
today, and if you use your phone to take 90% or more of your everyday
photos, you can't do better than that.
Sample Camera
Low light photos are generally good and have very little noise.
You can edit photos within the Lumia 1020. This was adjusted for contrast and white balance.
Details captured are good, but as you can see depth-of-field isn't very shallow.
Due to massive shutter lag and startup time, getting the right moment is very difficult. I got lucky here with the composition.
The 41MP PureView camera offers decent dynamic range. You can see details here in the shadows as well as the highlights.
Once
you've taken your photos, you can get creative with editing in camera.
This was adjusted for contrast and color saturation within the Nokia
Creative Studio.
Battery life
The Nokia Lumia 1020 has a small (by today's standards) 2,000mAh
battery, but Windows Phone 8's tight management of background processes
should make a difference compared to Androids. Also, there's the Camera
Grip accessory, which adds an extra 1,020mAh of battery capacity (along
with a big shutter key, a great grip and a tripod mount).
The talk time is very respectable at over 22 hours - other phones
have lasted longer, but they had larger batteries. Plus 22 hours of
calls is more than you can reasonably do over several days. Web browsing
is not great at just under 6 hours, but we recently saw the Sony Xperia
Z1 - one of Lumia 1020's most capable opponents in the camera
department - manage only as much on a 3,000mAh battery. Finally, the
video playback time is pretty great at 13 hours.
With an overall rating of 61 hours, the Nokia Lumia 1020 will easily
take you through a couple of days of moderate usage. If you browse the
web for more than an hour a day, you might have to charge the 1020
daily. Check out more details on the phone's battery life over at our blog.
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