Nokia Lumia 1020: A Complete Review.

Nokia has a broad range of Windows Phone handsets, addressing numerous price points and screen sizes. With the 4.5 inch Lumia 1020, the company has focused on the attractions of camera lovers, adding a 41 megapixel camera and photography software innovation to go with it.

Only Nokia isn't looking for camera technology to add a new dimension to it's Smartphone profile. One of the Samsung Galaxy S4, variants is the Galaxy S4 Zoom with it's 16 megapixel sensor.If you are familiar with the Lumia series, the 1020 shouldn't look unknown to you. It's curvature and total shape are similar to the Lumia 920 and the Lumia 820.

Nokia Lumia 1020: Design

There is no opportunity of mistaking the Nokia Lumia 1020 for any other Company's handset. The body is made of the typical soft-touch, grippable, scratch-proof poly-carbonate material that Nokia uses for it's Lumia series. This phone seems and feels like a to quality products. Strangely, the camera lens is not scratch-proof. So, one should take care to keep free of scratches.

Underneath the 4.5 inch screen, the usual Windows Phone back and search soft-keys are not backlit, and so are not specifically noticeable. Turn the Lumia 1020 over and the huge, circular surround for the camera lens, Xenon flash and focus light signals that this is no ordinary Smartphone.

The Lumia 1020's general shape and size make it a dead ringer for the Lumia 920: the 1020's measures is 71.4 x 130.4 x 10.4 mm. Comparing to 70.8 x 130.3 x 10.7 mm for the Lumia 920. At 158 gm, the Lumia 1020 is lighter in weight than the 185 gm Lumia 920. The Lumia 1020 is 158 gm and 10.4 mm thick, makes it significantly less slim than three main opponents: the Galaxy S4, iPhone 5S and the HTC One.

It' really worth noting that the camera housing is upper by about 4 mm from the back of the casing, which means that the handset won't sit parallel on a desk or table. If you like to push on your phone's screen while it's lying screen-up on a desk, you may find this wobbliness irritating.

Front and Back View

The Lumia 1020's Gorilla Glass 3-protected screen is large at 4.5 inches across the diagonal, but it looks more compact because of it's frame size. There's a standard-size bezel on the sides, and bigger on the top and bottom. Many people will find it challenging to use this phone one handed. The 332 ppi (1280 by 768 pixels) AMOLED display provides an extremely clear and vivid image. You won't find a higher-resolution Windows Phone because that's the highest the operating system supports.

The Pen Tile sub-pixel matrix that Nokia uses (Samsung is the owner pf the trademark) on it's AMOLED displays is seen by some as generating less sharp definition than an RGB-stripe design - especially for text. Nevertheless, text on the Lumia 1020 is completely readable in my view.

Nokia's button style and placing is pretty standard  on it's Lumia handset: the volume and power buttons are on the right edge, along with a dedicated camera button, while the left side s clear. There's a Micro-USB slot on the bottom and a headset jack on top alongside the housing for the Micro-SIM. Lumia 1020 is available in 3 colors: Yellow, Black and White. There is no memory card slot, it's surprising!

Nokia makes a Camera Grip item which sells for 47.99 Euro with VAT. This is available in colors to co-ordinate with the handset, and is make of the same poly-carbonate material. The Camera Grip is chunky and boosts the handset size significantly, but is designed to help you keep a steady hand while shooting. It features a 2000 mAh battery and a power level indicator, and also has a universal tripod connector. It also has it's on camera button.

Nokia Lumia 1020: Software and Performance.

The Nokia Lumia 1020 oparates Windows Phone 8, Microsoft's mobile phone system. There are no Nokia crstomizations, because they are not allowed. However, Nokia has done a good job of adding value to it's Windows Phone handsets. Nokia has built the Lumia 1020 around a fairly modest dual-core 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8960 chipset. There's a large 32 GB of internal storage and 7 GB of free SkyDrive storage. This is am important factor as there's no micro SD card slot for storing media files.

This is a top-end handset with a complete set of connectivity choices, including dual-band Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n), Bluetooth (3.0), Pentaband LTE (100 Mbps down, 50 Mbps up) and NFC. Nevertheless we expected better from the device's 2000 mAh battery which struggled to keep it going for 24 hours - particularly when we made use of the camera's Xenon flash. GDR2 reintroduces FM radio assistance to Windows Phone 8 (on supported devices, which includes the Lumia 1020), as well as other characteristics such as CardDAV support. There have also been advancements to the VOIP stack, bringing better performance for apps like Skype, along with various behind-the-scenes features for Internet Explorer. These modifications focus largely on increasing stablenes and dependability on larger, more complex web pages, as well as enhancing media playback from the web browser.

It includes free apps such as the superb Nokia Music, Here Maps for Google Maps-style Geo-location and Here Drive+ for point-to-point navigation. The basic camera capabilities of Windows Phone handsets can also be enhanced by software, and Nokia takes full benefit of that in the case of the Lumia 1020. Like every Windows Phone 8 mobile, the Lumia 1020 is ready to connect with social networks as soon as it's turned on. You can enter your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn details, so let the People hub (which acts as contacts book) get all your social updates.

Nokia Lumia 1020: Camera and Image Quality

The Lumia 1020's key feature is unquestionably it's camera. It has an eye-popping 41 megapixel camera with an super-large (for a mobile phone), 1/1.5 inch sensor with optical image stbilization and a significantly amazing dual LED/Xenon flash array. It's almost definitely the most sophisticated mobile phone camera ever made - although the Nokia 808 PureView did provide a slightly larger sensor and the Samsung Galaxy Zoom has an optical zoom. Those 41 megapixels aren't, of course, the full stor. Other camera functions contain image stabilization and 3x (digital) zoom, ISO settings between 100 and 4000, and shutter rates of speed between 1/16000 of  a second to 4 second. The Lumia 1020 arrives with Panorama shooting mode, Nokia Cinemagraph (which adds small animated components to photos), Nokia Smart Cam (which takes burst-mode shots and lets you produce composite images) and Bing Vision (a barcode and QR code scanner).

The most impressive bullet point of its characteristic list is the Lumia 1020's 41 megapixel resolution. However, it's developed mainly to capture images at five megapixels and its maximum successful resolution is 34 megapixels. The Lumia 1020 offers three separate camera apps - a bit of a handful. There's the standard Windows Phone 8 app, the Nokia Smart Lens app and the Pro Mode app to give you 'pro-style' control over camera settings. The Pro Mode is amazingly quick to utilize, but without question the major problem with the Nokia Lumia 1020 camera is shooting performance.  

Focusing is quick and dependable, but with a full four second delay between taking photos, the Lumia 1020 is much, much sower to snap than an iPhone 5S, which only has a half-second delay in between snaps. However, the photo is really taken rapily, so you won't miss the magic moment, but the delay is possibly down to the quantity of processing needed to squeeze all the info grabbed from a 41 megapixel sensor into a 5 megapixel image. Using the Pro mode you can select either to take 34 MP and 5 MP images or just the 5MP one, but the processing is constantly needed. So the camera is always slow to finish taking a picture.

Camera View

At the time of taking a photo, two images are grabbed. one is a 5 megapixel edition that you can share by email drop into your SkyDrive permitting or view on the handset. The other is a 34 megapixel image that you are not able to access until you connect the handset to a compute. Both images are related to the handset so that removing the one you're watching removes the other.

With a large 1/1.5 inch sensing unit, you would expect the Nokia Lumia 1020 to come up with superb image quality. And, for the most part, it doesn't dissatisfy. The Lumia 1020's 34 megapixel images blow away the competition in terms of the sheer amount of detail renderd (in good lighting). Side-by-side, the Lumia shames the Galaxy S4 with incredible reproduction of detail for a phone camera.

Camera Grip

The images themselves are indisputably of high quality, and the camera deals well with variable lighting conditions. it isn't good at very close-up shots though: you have to be minimum 15cm apart from the subject. The ways to low-light success with the Lumia 1020 are optical image stabilization and the Xenon flash. Both can be used to generate much better-than-average shots in low light photography. When capturing static objects, the Lumia 1020's stabilization is superb, able to make shots in mediocre lighting far less noise and much less washed-out than they would otherwise seem. Comparing the Lumia 1020 with the HTC One, it's clear that the Nokia Lumia able to creating superior shallow depth of field effect than its opponents.

What are the important things about 1020 as a camera phone?
- Bigger sensor (huge for a smartphone)
- Good lenses
- Optical stabilization
- Mechanical shutter
- Xenon flash.

Nokia Lumia 1020: Video Capture

The Nokia Lumia 1020 isn't at the cutting edge of headline features when it comes to video capture. Phones are commencing to integrate 4K video capture, where the 1020 is stuck in plain old 1080p. In fact, this is more than enough, and the phone has far more advantageous features. The best is in-video optical image stabilization. 

The same lens motors that remove the shaky-hand effect in the photos are used in video, and they eliminate the tremors that make hand held video look so sloppy. It won't perform miracles - jolts will still register as jolts and when pushed the OIS can cause a screen tearing effect, but it boosts the quality of casually-taken video a good deal. 

The Nokia Lumia 1020 has a truly amazing camera capable of shooting respectable photos. However, it's no replacement for a good digital camera, and heavy use seriously reduces the battery. The Lumia 1020 definitely has appeal, but many users might do better with the 920 and a good dedicated camera.

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