Every once in a while, something comes out that is so weird and wonderful it forces you to rethink what you’d taken for granted. This is the case with the Nokia Lumia 1020 Windows smartphone which is a bizarre frankenphonecamera packing a stonking great 41Mp image sensor. The burning question in my mind as I unboxed it was this: is a high-end camera with a big image sensor and high-end optics going to be enough to keep a Windows phone in the game?
Look and feel
There is no mistaking the Lumia 1020 for anything else but a Nokia handset given its polycarbonate body which is finished in a vivid yet cool yellow. You can have any colour you want as long as its psychedelic yellow, black or white. I liked yellow – it made the 1020 impossible to lose.
Front-on, you’d be forgiven for having a pretty tough time telling the 1020 apart from its older sibling, the 920. Both look practically identical. Flip the 1020 over, however, and things begin to get interesting thanks to the large round camera sensor module mounted on the 1020’s behind.
The 1020 isn’t a small phone. In fact, you could politely say that even though it’s big boned, it’s also well proportioned. For a start, it’s 10.4mm thick (plus the camera sensor module). It’s also got some reassuring heft, weighing in at 158g, surprisingly lighter than the 920.
Like other Lumias, the 1020 is also built like a brick-you-know-what house. Not only does the polycarbonate body feel reassurringly solid with no flexing or creaking, it also does a great job of hiding minor dings and scratches. The 1020’s screen is no wimp either thanks to its Gorilla Glass 3 coating.
Under the hood
Bizarrely, the folks at Nokia appear to have reused much of the guts of the 920 for the 1020, which has the same 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor. In use, the 1020 performed smoothly with typical use and no noticeable glitching with processing intensive chores such as gaming.
Considering its chunky form factor, the 1020’s screen is just 11cm. Reading the screen size spec, I did an involuntary double take – the screen just feels a whole lot bigger.
The screen’s resolution mightn’t be anything to write home about, but it supports the Windows Phone 8 default resolution of 768 x 1280. This is pretty academic – the Windows phone interface still looked incredibly vivid – so do photos and videos.
The 1020 ships with 32GB of storage, but there is no micro SD slot to bolster storage which is a shame given the monster image files created by the 1020’s 41MP camera.
As you’d expect for a high-end, high-spec device, the 1020 supports plenty of connectivity options out of the box including wi-fi, Bluetooth, NFC, 3G and 4G.
And the camera, wow! For a start, it packs a massive 41Mp image sensor, Zeiss optics and a Xenon and LED flash which makes the current crop of phone flashes look wimpy.
Combined with Nokia’s Pro Cam app, the 1020’s camera is a stunner. The level detail able to be captured has to be seen to be believed – detail was pin sharp.
Another nice feature I learnt to love was the 1020’s floating lens and image stabilisation, which allowed me to capture some surprisingly crisp images that on other handsets would at best be abstract; at worst, a blurry unintelligible mess. In low light situations, the 1020 took shots that shone.
There are also drawbacks with such a large image sensor.
At 41Mp, there’s a hell of a lot of data to shunt around with each photo.
This hasn’t escaped the attention of the phone-cam boffins at Nokia who designed the 1020 to take two photographs, one at a crispy (but massive) 38MP and a smaller more easily shared 5MP.
The bigger images contain a shedload of data and because of this, can take time to process and save.
A gargantuan camera sensor and finite storage should in theory be an annoying combo given the absence of a Micro SD slot, but photos can be uploaded automatically via SkyDrive, which over wi-fi using my home broadband connection, was a seamless background process.
Shutterbugs will also appreciate the Nokia Pro Cam app which gives a heap of control over camera settings ranging from ISO, shutter speed, exposure through to focus. I did find the Panorama app temperamental, but the finished results were stunning.
Apps
One feature I really liked was called “Glance” which displays a clock when the 1020 is in standby mode. There is also a “peek” mode which will display the time if you wave your hand over the 1020 but I rarely used it.
As with other Lumias, the 1020 bundled with tons of Nokia apps including Maps, Drive+, Music, Cinemagraph and Creative Studio and these go some of the way to addressing the chasm between the Windows phone store and what’s available via Android and IOS (a real shame as the 1020 would rock with Instagram).
But Microsoft needs to pull finger to attract developers if the Windows phone ecosystem is to really flourish and survive to challenge Apple and Google.
Battery life
While the 1020 got through a 9-5 day with typical use, it wasn’t long after 5 that it demanded a dose of DC voltage goodness, and that was done with powersaving modes enabled.
Snapping photos (especially when the flash and focus assist light are in use) nails the battery in a few hours.
Verdict
The 1020 is a great phone with all the design hallmarks and build quality we’ve come to expect from Nokia. What sets it apart from the others, is its camera – hands down the best camera I’ve seen on a phone. About the only real negative, is its lacklustre battery life. – New Zealand Herald