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.
The Nokia Lumia 1520 is just like the rest of the premium Lumia
smartphones we've seen, but bigger and faster. The advanced imaging and
the custom app selection by Nokia will make the difference against
Android phablets, with the Snapdragon 800 making sure the Finn won't
feel outgunned. Sounds like a promise for the best experience yet on
Windows Phone.
A few months ago Nokia was in the headlines
for what seemed the wrongest of reasons to people who fondly remembered
the Finns from their glory days. Voices were rising once again above
the lamenting choir, about what might have been had Nokia gone with
Android instead.
Oh well, we're well past the what-ifs and should-haves. And no, it's
not because Microsoft's check has already been written. Nokia's first
phabet has crossed into what was, until now, a strictly Android
territory. And not just average droids either, but some of the biggest,
meanest species of Android we have seen.
The Nokia Lumia 1520 didn't just tip-toe in, looking over its
shoulder. Armed with a PureView camera, a 1080p display and a quad-core
Snapdragon 800, the Finnish giant entered with a bang!
The latest GDR3 version of Windows Phone finally has support for
quad-core Krait processors and Full HD displays. There's an attempt
too, to make better use of the size and resolution by adding an extra
column of contents across the interface. It was about time Microsoft
brought the platform back in the hardware race and we are delighted to
finally meet the first Windows Phone to aim for the pole position.
Design
With the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and the HTC One Max,
the smartphone war appears to have moved on from processor cores and
camera megapixels and into the realm of screen inches and pixel density.
It's not what your phone does, it's how at how large a scale it does it, and how sharply.
This
trend towards the pocket-filling may run counter to the whole concept
of a "mobile" phone, but that's to misunderstand what customers these
days want from their phones (or at least think they want).
People
have the taste for HD films, uncompromized web browsing and expansive
gaming on the go. They don't want mobile phones, they want mobile
tablets.
Android has several "phablet" champions,
including the ones mentioned above. Now here's the Nokia Lumia 1520 to
provide the first large-screen Windows Phone 8 flagship.
In fact, scratch that: the Nokia Lumia 1520 is the new Windows Phone 8 flagship, full stop.
It's
evident in the spec sheet alone. This is the first Windows Phone 8
device with a Full HD 1080p display. It's also the first to run on a
quad-core processor.
We're not just talking about any HD
display either. We're talking about a 6-inch 1920 x 1080 IPS LCD screen
(producing 367ppi) with Nokia's ClearBlack and super-sensitive
technologies. The former means that you can see it better when outside,
and the latter means you can use it with your gloves on - two immensely
practical features that tend to get brushed over too quickly.
While
we're at it, this isn't just any quad-core processor, either. This
Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chip, clocked at 2.2GHz and backed by a healthy
2GB of RAM, is the most powerful quad-core chip currently on the market.
It's the same processor as can be found in the Galaxy Note 3 and the Google Nexus 5.
With
these two components alone, Nokia has lifted the Windows Phone platform
to specification parity with its Android rivals after three solid years
of trailing firmly in its wake. It's quite a big achievement.
There's
that word again. Big. The Nokia Lumia 1520 is big in every way. Opening
the box drew a genuine gasp from this typically stony-faced writer, who
moments before had been typing out an email on his teeny-tiny iPhone 5S.
Initially,
the Nokia Lumia 1520 looks ridiculous next to Apple's stubbornly
compact phone. After a few hours' company with the 1520, you might well
find that the iPhone 5S looks and feels like a toy.
That's not to say that we prefer the Lumia 1520 as a day-to-day tool. Let's be straight - it's too big for most general users.
At
6.41 x 3.36in, it will slip into the back pocket of your jeans, but
only if it's that pair you bought in preparation for the forthcoming
festive pig-out. And there won't be space in there for anything else.
In
fact, now might be the time to acquaint yourself with a good tailor,
because you'll either need to reinforce those pockets or repair them. At
206g, this is one hefty piece of kit.
To
place the Lumia 1520's size and weight in context, it's a good 40g
heavier than the Galaxy Note 3 with its similarly sized 5.7-inch
display, and is a whole centimeter taller. It's also 6mm wider.
Having
said all that, the Nokia Lumia 1520 feels surprisingly sleek in the
hand, and that's partly down to its 8.7mm thickness. Compared to other
Lumia phones like the Nokia Lumia 1020 or the Nokia Lumia 925, it's proportionally flatter.
Even
the 20MP PureView camera barely breaks the rear contour with its subtle
blister shape, unlike the angry carbuncle on Nokia's last phone, the
Lumia 1020.
Then there's Nokia's customary high-class
build quality. We've said it before, but Nokia is the only other
smartphone manufacturer out there capable of rivaling Apple for strong,
distinctive design.
The
Lumia 1520 continues Nokia's predilection for unibody polycarbonate
designs. This means that it's essentially carved out of a single solid
chunk of posh plastic. If you've never held a Nokia Lumia device before,
then think of last year's HTC One X and you'll have an idea of how it feels.
We
didn't dare put it to the test, but the Lumia 1520 feels like it would
survive its share of drops, and certainly a little rough and tumble -
although its sharply pointed corners are asking to be dinged, and it
doesn't use the very latest version of toughened Gorilla Glass.
There's a slight ridge where the display meets the chassis. When Nokia introduced this design with the Nokia Lumia 800, its display melted into its body, which added an extra feel of class. It's a shame that's not been included here.
Curiously,
after the flamboyant flourishes witnessed elsewhere (especially in the
shocking yellow of our test model), the Nokia Lumia 1520's physical
buttons seem almost coy. They're practically flush with the chassis
along the right hand side - even the two-stage physical camera shutter
button barely raises its head.
This
helps with the ergonomics of this unwieldy device, but doesn't help
when you're fumbling for the volume controls in the dark.
On
the opposite side of the device you have the microSD card slot and the
SIM slot. The former is in addition to the 32GB of internal memory,
raising the possibility of a whopping 96GB of storage.
The
latter accepts a nanoSIM, which is even smaller than the micro SIMs
found in previous Nokia phones. It's the same standard used by Apple,
and it serves to free up a few valuable millimeters of space for other
internal components. Although we doubt that the Lumia 1520's innards are
exactly struggling for air.
In summary, the Nokia Lumia
1520 is certainly striking, but we wouldn't want to be struck with one.
You're getting a lot of phone here for your $749 (around £460 /
AUS$775). An awful lot.
Key features
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
Quad-band 3G with 42 Mbps HSDPA and 5.7 Mbps HSUPA support
Built-in accelerometer, gyroscope and proximity sensor
Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
microUSB port
Bluetooth v4.0 with A2DP and file transfers
SNS integration
Xbox Live integration and Xbox management
NFC support
Digital compass
Nokia Music
FM radio
Main disadvantages
Screen has average sunlight legibility
Non-user-replaceable battery
No system-wide file manager
No lockscreen shortcuts
At first glance the Lumia 1520 looks like a magnified Lumia 1020 - it
has the same design and build, only without the camera hump. The
trademark unibody is the right bit more impressive at that size, while
the PureView camera has lost some of its sensor area and half of its
pixels, but hopefully kept the amazing image quality.
Nokia's Lumia Black update isn't bringing as many new features as
Amber, while the GDR3 version mostly makes sure the OS would happily
accommodate the new chipset and screen resolution. Users will perhaps
have to wait for the 8.1 update for a notification center (hopefully)
and a file manager (not too likely) among other things.
Nokia Lumia 1520 lice photos
Yup, the Lumia 1520 sounds just like what the doctor ordered for the
ailing Nokia cellphone business. It makes us sad that they've decided to
scrap any future effort altogether, but that doesn't mean it won't be
closing the show with a bang. We may be well into their farewell season,
but the finale is not close. It's too early to write Nokia off just yet
- what we have ahead seems like the climax of its work. And the
hardware inspection of one of their finest specimens is just a click
away. So, shall we?
Screen quality
Most of the phone's chassis is taken up by its 6-inch 1080p HD LCD screen, which made the Windows Phone start screen pop.
Colors look bright and edges crisp on the Lumia 1520's screen, which
has a pixel density of 367ppi. The One Max and Note 3, with their
slightly smaller screens, do pack in more pixels, but the difference is
hardly noticeable.
Nokia always wins my appreciation for its work on ratcheting down
screen reflectance with a polarizing filter called ClearBlack Display.
Not only is it intended to fight glare in direct sunlight -- which makes
screens easier to read -- it also helps keep light bounceback in check
indoors. With the sunlight readability setting on (relax, it's default),
the Lumia 1520 automatically adjusts when it registers bright rays, and
backs off when you go back inside. This makes a big difference when
you're relying on your phone to read directions or reference a Web site
while you're walking outside.
The Lumia 1520 is too large to comfortably fit into small pockets.
Josh Miller/CNET
Indeed,
with all three phones on both automatic settings and maximum brightness
settings, the Lumia 1520 was the easiest of the trio to read outside in
the direct noonday sun. Colors were punchier, text looked sharper (and
also rendered larger), and glare was easier to dodge. If you're a fan of
a different color tone, you can adjust the phone's color profile in the
settings.
Thanks to its sensitive screen, you can operate the phone with (most) gloves or with a fingernail.
OS and features
Along with the midlevel Nokia Lumia 1320, the Lumia 1520 is the first to ship Microsoft's slightly updated OS, imaginatively called Windows Phone 8 Update 3. The main thing you need to know is that this tweak
introduces a three-column view for device screens measuring 6 inches and
above.
This layout fits naturally on the 1520, not toylike as it could have
looked if Microsoft had just opted to increase the size of its already
large live tiles. The three-column view has the bonus of bringing more
icons to the screen, which means less scrolling for you, especially if
you make use of the smallest tiles. You'll also find that more e-mails
and gallery photos fill the screen, another fringe benefit of upsizing.
Windows Phone gives you standard calendar and alarm tools, Xbox gaming tie-ins, podcasts, and the mobile version of the Microsoft Office
suite. Also included is 7GB of Skydrive cloud storage. Multitasking,
multiple inboxes, integrated social sharing, music identification, and a
barcode scanner are also woven into the Windows Phone platform.
The Lumia's 1520 uses Windows Phone's new three-column interface for ultralarge devices.
Josh Miller/CNET
Perhaps
more important than what's there is what's missing. Microsoft's
outdated TellMe software can open any installed app, make calls, send a
text, and search the weather (among other things,) but it lacks the kind
of deeply-integrated natural language engine powering Apple's Siri and
Google's Voice Actions (commonly called Google Now).
Microsoft is hard at work on Cortana,
its belated answer to these two, but that doesn't help the 1520. Unlike
iOS and Android, you can't specifically search for much, and the phone
sure won't read out answers to you. You can't even dictate text into
messages using a keyboard toggle; it doesn't exist. For a phone as large
and sometimes hard to hold as the 1520, voice dictation integrated into
every keyboard (not just e-mail and text composition) is something I
yearned for throughout my testing period.
Also conspicuously absent is a native Microsoft store for buying and
renting TV shows and movies, a shame since the 1520's 6-inch screen is
primed for extended video playback. Of course, there are plenty of
third-party ways to get content: Hulu+, Netflix, Vevo, Vimeo, YouTube,
and Crackle, for example, plus AT&T's aforementioned U-Verse Mobile
TV service. But don't let those distract you from Microsoft's missed
opportunity in closing the loop itself.
As for preloaded apps, a plethora from AT&T, Nokia, and Microsoft
and their partners awaits -- like Nokia Music and Here Maps, AT&T's
subscription Mobile TV ($10 per month), and Bing Finance and Weather,
to name just a few. The Vine video snippet creation app, Yellow Pages
Mobile, and Zinio are other examples of partner installations.
This slim metal tool now opens two doors: the SIM card tray and the microSD card slot.
Josh Miller/CNET
Seek
out Nokia's many branded apps, and you'll find a new one that the
company is pushing hard. Called Nokia Storyteller, this optional app
(whose shortcut is preloaded by default) essentially mashes up your
photo gallery with geotagging to create a timeline of your happenings
which you can follow on a map.
The interface looks clean, and I love the idea of Nokia software
intelligently using metadata to cluster together photos by theme (yes,
you can edit them if the groupings are wrong). Over time, and travels
outside your home city, it promises a more comprehensive way to tell
family and friends about recent trips, especially since the app uses
Nokia's Here mapping software to pull in nearby businesses and
landmarks.
At these early stages, it just isn't clear if Storyteller is a pretty
but minimally useful addition, or a feature that people will learn to
use. Folks who prefer a spatial reference to locations (like my dad, who
endearingly interrupts stories to ask for cross streets), are likely to
get the most excited.
Back on the hardware end of things, there's NFC, or near-field communications, onboard the 1520, and Qi wireless charging makes its return.
User Interface: GDR3 + Lumia Black
The Nokia Lumia 1520 comes with Windows Phone 8 GDR3 (the Lumia Black
edition) out of the box. The Microsoft-issued GDR3 reelase and the
Nokia-made Black enhancements add a handful of new features, but most
importantly bring support for 1080p screens and the Snapdragon 800
chipset, without which the 1520 would've been impossible.
That said, the user interface still feels very familiar if you are
coming from another Windows Phone device. Yes, you can fit more Live
Tiles per row on the homescreen (6 of the smallest ones, up from 4), but
that turned out to be a function of the screen size rather than a Lumia
Black specific feature. There are a couple of other changes, we'll get
to those in a minute.
Here is a quick video to get you started:
A push on the unlock button or a double tap on the screen 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 and jump straight
into the camera app.
The lock screen • Music controls on the lockscreen
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 a less detailed quick status.
There are already apps in the Store that display the battery percentage
on the lockscreen via those kind of notifications.
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 any way you like. Almost anything can be pinned to the
homescreen - apps, contacts, web pages and more. Unfortunately, the app
launcher is still just an alphabetical list of all apps, no folders, no
icon grid. We don't think it works too well on a 6" screen.
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. Microsoft is expected to bring better
multi-tasking with the Windows Phone 8.1 update.
The multi-tasking interface
The new feature in GDR3 is that you can "close" apps by hitting the X
button. It's not as comfortable as swiping apps away, but at least now
you have control over the recent apps list.
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. There's a new Screen rotation lock
feature, but it requires you to exit the app, find it in the settings,
enable it and then get back to the app. The same goes for all the other
settings, it's just too many steps for such a common task.
There is one new setting as part of the GDR3 refresh - screen rotation, where you turn on/off the automatic UI rotation.
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 working on just such a
feature and that we should see it in a future update.
Android, for example, has a widget that shows you a list of emails
complete with the subject and a line of the message body. You can scroll
through that list and hit a specific message to read it. There are more
examples of how widgets are more interactive than Live Tiles and while
the difference is relatively minor on the small 4" screen of the Lumia
520, the setup feels limiting on the large, high-res screen of the Lumia
1520. Let's not even mention the split-screen multitasking and mini
apps that are popular on 5+ inch devices and are certainly not present
here.
The Lumia 1520 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. With GDR3 there's an option to prevent
data usage when roaming.
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.
Data Sense is useful if you're on a limited data plan
Naturally, Nokia Lumia 1520 comes with a special feature for kids
conveniently dubbed Kid's corner (HTC liked it well enough to put a
similar feature on the One series). 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 off 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
Driving Mode can be enabled automatically when the phablet connects
to a specific Bluetooth device (i.e. your car's stereo). This mode mutes
all notifications except calls and texts, but you can mute those too.
If you do, you can set an automatic reply text.
Driving mode
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.
Being a WP8 handset, the Nokia Lumia 1520 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).
Battery life
The battery in the Lumia 1520 is sealed, but it has the reasonably
big capacity of 3,400mAh. The phablet comes with built-in wireless
charging, a feature that was missing in the 1020. To make use of it
however, you would have to buy separately a Qi wireless charger - these
days those come in many shapes and sizes.
The massive battery, light-weight Windows Phone OS and
power-efficient display were made to count in video-playback and web
browsing test. They surely helped the Lumia 1520 achieve an amazing
score despite the huge estate to light up. Talk time and the overall
stand-by endurance are great too thus the 107h top-notch rating is no
surprising.
Anyway, with an overall rating of 107 hours, the Lumia 1520 is well
ahead of the other phablets we've tested so far. What this number means
is that the Lumia 1520 should manage four and a half days on a single
charge if used for one hour each of calls, web browsing and video
playback daily.
20MP PureView camera
The Nokia Lumia 1520 has a brand new Nokia PureView camera. It uses a
1/2.5" sensor with 20MP resolution. To put that in context, the sensor
has 15% smaller surface area than the 20MP 1/2.3" sensor in the Xperia
Z1 and about a third of the size of the Lumia 1020's PureView sensor. On
the other hand the Lumia 1520 camera imager is still almost twice the
size of most of its competitors, and 30% larger than those who tout
"big" 1/3" sensors - like the iPhone 5s and the HTC One.
The Nokia Lumia 1520 offers ZEISS lens, but it has a relatively
narrow f/2.4 aperture (compared to f/2.2 on the 1020). There's no xenon
flash either, all of which should affect the low-light performance.
Still, the good news is that Nokia managed to keep the optical image
stabilization and the dual-LED flash is stronger than the common
single-LED units, so the Lumia 1520 should still be competitive against
other devices in the dark.
Nokia has created a special app for its flagship Lumias dubbed
Nokia Pro Camera. Being one of the phone's key software features, it's
there to compliment the PureView camera with a simple user interface
that allows users to fine tune the camera settings. It may sound
intimidating, but Nokia has done a great job of making the app simple to
use for both novices and professionals alike.
The Nokia Camera is the successor of Nokia Camera Pro and is the
advanced imaging software the Lumia 1520 is meant to be used with. It
features transparent box in the top center with six camera settings.
From left to right they are flash, white balance, focus, ISO, shutter
speed and exposure compensation.
Nokia Pro Camera app user interface
Tapping on each of them opens a ring-based interface on the right
side of the screen. You can access all of them simultaneously by sliding
the on-screen shutter button to the left. This will stack sliders for
all six settings next to one another allowing you to easily fiddle with
them all at the same time. The settings you modify are kept at the
values you chose, with the others adjusted accordingly by the software.
We really like this interface - it's intuitive and powerful at the same
time.
One major complaint about the Lumia 1020's camera is how slow it is
to save photos. We're happy to report the Lumia 1520 camera is a
significant improvement in this respect - it's clearly faster (about
three times depending on the scenario) and while still not the snappiest
around it's certainly not bothering.
As we mentioned earlier, the Camera lens has another cool trick up
its sleeve. It snaps two photos at once - one in full resolution (16MP
or 19MP depending on the chosen aspect ratio) and another one in 5MP,
which benefits from the pixel oversampling technology, while at the same
time being far easier to share.
You get lossless zoom of just under 2x for the 5MP shots. It's not
completely lossless as it using it means you will have to do without
oversampling, but it's miles ahead of the digital zoom competitors are
offering.
Nokia Camera also comes with a brand new option - shooting in RAW.
It's DNG - digital negative - format developed by Adobe, which has wide
support in photo editing software. While casual consumers are way better
off sticking to JPEG, photo enthusiasts can use the RAW files, which
contain all the information captured by the sensor, to produce even
better results. Without the JPEG compression applied you get more
headroom for editing.
Keep in mind that those DNG files are around 20MB big, while a
full-resolution JPEG is around 4MB, the 5MP JPEGs are a mere 1MB. RAW
files cannot be viewed by most desktop software either (e.g. web
browsers) without processing, which is another thing to keep in mind if
you want to share photos.
The latest version of the app also has the Nokia Smart Camera suite,
so you don't have to switch from one app to the other to get the cool
effects. The Smart camera makes you hold the phone steady for a few
seconds for each shot, but then allows you to remove moving objects,
change the faces of those in the photo, simply pick the best shot from
the bunch of clips it makes.
Nokia Smart camera features
Nokia Smart Camera shoots a burst of 10 photos at 5MP resolution and
allows you to edit those photos later. When editing a Smart Camera photo
you choose one of several modes by swiping through their respective
cards, each with a helpful label.
The basic feature here is best shot - automatically selecting the
best photo out of the 10 (you can manually override the selection). You
can also select the best expression for each individual face in the
photo.
The multiple photos can be used to remove moving objects as well.
Smart Camera can pick the best expression for each face • or remove moving objects
Then there's Action shot - a moving object is overlaid on the photo
several times to create a sense of motion. You can pick which of the 10
photos are used to create the action shot and the multiple copies can
either be opaque or semitransparent.
The other mode that enhances motion is Motion focus - it locks the
moving object, but blurs the background around it. Imagine turning the
camera to track a fast moving object, that's the effect that Motion
focus simulates.
Action shot • Motion focus
Nokia has a number of cool camera lenses, which we've covered before
and are exclusive to the Lumia line, but the most impressive is the new
Refocus lens. It snaps several photos at different focus points and
allows you to interactively change the focus of the image after the fact
or bring the whole image in focus.
Best of all, these interactive images are easy to share by email,
Facebook and messaging, unlike some other proprietary camera apps that
lock you into the maker's ecosystem.
Here's a Refocus images in action:
Panorama lens is self-explanatory - you press the shutter and then
align the camera as instructed (the app will put circles you have to aim
for). It's good, but you always shoot right to left (can't switch
direction), which is a bit annoying. Shooting in portrait orientation is
impossible too.
Cinemagraph lens creates photos that are mostly static, but a part of
them is animated. You have to hold the phone steady while shooting - a
tripod works best. When you're done, the Lens will offer two (sometimes
three) areas that can be animated and when you pick an area, you can
tweak the animation, trim it, and set the loop pattern. You can get back
to the image later and correct it if you didn't get it right the first
time around (we did that to reduce camera shake visible in the
background).
The Nokia Camera app isn't limited to shooting still images, it can
capture video too, and does quite well. Tapping the video icon at the
top gets you to the video part of the app. There you have access to just
the relevant settings: flash, white balance and focus. The focus can be
set to either manual, auto or infinity.
Video recording also makes use of OIS and oversampling. Zoom is
enabled even during video capture and it can go up to 3x in 1080p mode
and up 4x in 720p mode. The 1080p videos are recorded at 30fps, but you
can pick 24fps and 25fps too.
The Nokia Lumia 1520 has a total of four mics (two at the front, two
on the back) with the company's proprietary Rich Audio Recording for
distortion-free sound recording in loud environments. These can be used
for another intriguing feature as well - it's dubbed Directional stereo.
When you enable it, the sound in front of the camera is recorded
clearer than the rest, potentially dealing with unwanted noises in your
video and enhancing a subject's voice.
The GoodNokia's Lumia 1520
delivers a large, glare-fighting screen, a fast processor, plenty of
storage, and a strong 20-megapixel camera for the same on-contract price
as a smaller premium phone.
The BadIts
size makes one-handed operation difficult, and call quality was muddier
than on most Nokia phones. Limited voice dictation and voice assistance
in the OS hobbles its usefulness as a phablet.
The Bottom LineThough
it lacks some features found in its big phone rivals, the Nokia Lumia
1520 is a great buy for Windows Phone fans seeking a supersize
smartphone with premium hardware.
