Nokia Lumia Icon owners on Verizon Wireless gets firmware update

Starting Friday, May 9, Verizon subscribers who use Lumia Icon received a firmware update on their handsets. Lumia Icon users have experienced some issues with Windows Phone 8.1 which appeared to be caused by an update of version 8.0.

The Verizon-published PDF has the details of the update, the major enhancement of which is the Wi-Fi connectivity improvement that is made consistent, even when traveling internationally.

There are changes made in Nokia Music, such as changing Nokia Music to Nokia MixRadio, refurbishing the app for easier use, and improving the offline downloading of mixes. The Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down help refine the user's music profile and a personalized mix PlayMe distinguishes the user's distinct music characteristic. Sharing of mixes on Twitter, Facebook, SMS and email, is also made possible.

The Nokia Camera app is pre-loaded, with an integration of Nokia Smart Capture Mode and Nokia Pro Camera. Some of this app's features are not just to capture photos but to also SmartBurst videos and sequences and optimize Auto-Mode for quick point-and-shoot. A mode for Direct Access to Night/Sport will be present as well as a tidier dashboard that offers more controls and enables manual setting. The Reframing/Edit feature saves the original files so the user can make editions as much as he likes.

Updates are also applied to Beamer, Settings, Cinemagraph, Storyteller, App Social, HERE maps and HERE drive.

A reader from Windows Phone Central cited two noticeable changes after getting the update – the boot splash of Verizon changed from orange to white and the Wi-Fi sign in the status bar got a little arrow.

Buy a Lumia and get $65 of free Entertainment

Have you recently purchased a Nokia Lumia 1020, 1520 or Icon? If so, Microsoft has a little surprise for you.

Microsoft announced today that it’s running a promotion that awards buyers of the Nokia Lumia 1020, 1520 and Icon with $65 of free content. That includes $40 worth of Gameloft games, including Asphalt 7 and Assassin’s Creed — Altair’s Chronicles, as well as a $25 voucher to spend on apps, movies and TV shows. The promo is valid in 39 countries and will run through June 30.

In order to take advantage of this offer, owners of the eligible Lumia models can download the Gift Voucher app from the Windows Phone Store and enter their LiveID credentials to receive their $25 credit. The free Gameloft games can be acquired by pointing your Lumia’s browser to this page and then tapping on the “Get your free games” link.

Overall, this sounds like a pretty spiffy deal for Lumia 1020, 1520 and Icon owners. The 9 different games ought to help fill your free time for quite a while, and even if you’re not a gamer, you’ll receive $25 to spend on other apps or video content.

How many of you are rocking a Lumia 1020, 1520 or Icon as your daily driver?

Via Nokia

Nokia Lumia 1320 review dual core, 6 inch screen with HD

Nokia has been late to the big-screen party, not because it was too slow to react to a changing market, but because the Windows Phone platform it has committed to wasn't able to support such devices until very recently. Clearly, the company has been well aware of demand for such phones for long enough to develop a strategy that allows them to target premium and value-conscious buyers.

Thus, the Lumia 1520, with its full-HD screen and 20-megapixel PureView camera, is complemented by a humbler sibling, the new Lumia 1320. Both products will appeal to those who have been considering any of many oversized Android devices that have recently flooded the market. Just like Samsung realized that large phones don't necessarily have to be premium flagships, Nokia knows it must cater to as many types of buyers as it can.

In our review of the 1520, we noted that it was quite expensive and that the Windows Phone ecosystem still has some pretty major shortcomings in terms of overall polish and the availability of apps. That concern about cost won't apply quite so much to the 1320, but on the other hand, we won't have such headlining features as a PureView camera and top-of-the-line processor to distract us from the OS's gaping holes.

The Lumia 1320 is more for people who just want to own a large phone than for those who might actually benefit from a high-res screen or powerful internals. That said, it isn't a weak performer and is still better configured than similar-sized devices from budget brands, such as the Xolo Q3000 and Micromax Canvas Turbo. In terms of both price and specifications, it's on par with Samsung's Galaxy Grand 2. Let's see if there's a noticeable performance difference between the two.

Look and feel
It's hard not to compare the Nokia Lumia 1320 to its older sibling. Where the 1520 was somewhat squared off at the corners and flat at the back, the 1320 is curvy all around. It's heavier, but feels more comfortable in the hand. Another difference is that there's no need for a bump to accommodate the camera, since there isn't anything special about it.

The Lumia 1320 is larger in every dimension and also quite a bit heavier than most other phones of its size on the market today, including the Lumia 1520 and the Galaxy Grand 2. It won't fit comfortably in the pocket of your skinny jeans, and you'll feel its weight and bulk as you walk. Don't expect to be able to use it with one hand either: no matter which way you hold it, your thumb simply won't be able to reach all corners of the screen without some extremely uncomfortable wrist acrobatics.

This time, Nokia has gone with a matte finish. Unlike most covers which pop off from the back, this one creeps around the four sides and must be peeled off from the lower left front corner. Taking the cover off is a bit of a chore and we were constantly afraid we'd bend it too far, but it held up just fine.

While we're reminded of the craze for coloured shells and panels for Nokia's older phones, it doesn't look like the company is selling them as accessories for this model, at least not yet. That's disappointing, because there really seems to be no other reason why the shell is removable. There really isn't anything to see beneath it; only the Micro-SIM and microSD card slots, which are sandwiched together on one side. The battery is not removable and also not visible.

The only physical buttons are the volume rocker, power/standby, and camera shortcut key, which are all on the phone's right edge and are actually part of the shell, by necessity. The power button is in the middle, which is a bit too low for your thumb or forefinger to reach, no matter which hand you hold the phone with.

The left edge is completely blank, and only things you'll see on the top and bottom are the headset jack and Micro-USB port respectively. The back is a blank canvas with only the camera lens, flash, and speaker cutout arranged in a neat line down the middle. The front camera is off-centre, while the standard three capacitive navigation buttons can be found below the screen.

Features and specifications
The Lumia 1320 is not a high-end phone, and every line in its spec sheet reminds us of that fact. It makes do with a mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 400, which has two cores and runs at 1.7GHz. The integrated Adreno 305 GPU takes care of graphics, and there's 1GB of RAM to help with multitasking and heavy applications.

The screen is pretty decent, and uses Nokia's ClearBlack IPS LCD process to improve contrast levels. 720x1280 is not a low resolution by any means, but it does begin to look a bit stretched out on such a large screen. You'll notice a bit of jaggedness around the Windows Phone 8 interface thanks to the liberal use of extremely thin typography. It's not a deal breaker, but the Lumia 1320 just doesn't look that great in comparison to the many phones with full-HD panels that are becoming more common today.

Unsurprisingly, there's only 8GB of built-in storage, but you can add up to 64GB more using a microSD card. Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 LE are standard. All the necessary GSM and 3G bands are supported, although you won't be able to use LTE in India thanks to a mismatch of standards.

None of these specifications are particularly thrilling, but that doesn't mean the phone is underpowered. In fact, it's actually pretty well balanced, and specs like these were impossible at this price point not all that long ago. It's more than enough grunt for the kind of usage you should expect out of a phone at this price point. You won't be playing full-HD videos or games, and multitasking between several intense apps.

The main camera is a simple 5-megapixel affair capable of 1080p video recording, but a few of the neat tricks that the 1520's PureView module offers are carried over. We'll get to those in more detail later. The front-facing camera is a completely pedestrian 640x480-pixel VGA unit which we're disappointed with.

The battery is rated at 3400mAh, which is the same as the one in the Lumia 1520. That phone gave us over 10 hours of battery life, so this one should do a lot better thanks to the lower power draw of the screen and processor.

The Lumia 1320 runs Windows Phone 8, but benefits from a few touches designed by Nokia, known as the "Lumia Black" update. As described at length in our Lumia 1520 review, these features include the extremely useful Glance Screen and a handful of apps.

Software
Nokia's famous Here Maps and Here Drive apps can be found on the home screen, along with Nokia Beamer, Microsoft Office, Xbox Games, Evernote, Flipkart Ebooks and Adidas Micoach. The advanced camera app from higher-end Lumias is missing, which isn't a surprise (although you can download it from the Store). However, many of its functions are made up for in the Nokia Creative Studio app.

This app lets you open and manipulate photos you've already taken with the vanilla camera app. You'll first see a list of colour filters including variations of the usual sepia, monochrome and vintage effects. After that, you can play with tilt-shift and radial blur effects, create collages, or select a single colour to "pop" while the rest of the photo turns black-and-white. There are also options for tweaking the colour balance and vibrance, plus the usual crop, rotate and red eye removal tools. It's a fun app, although we don't know why you have to first select a filter (or specifically select "original") before you can see the various editing tools.

There's also Camera360, a separate app that allows you to take photos and give them effects. MoliPlayer lets you play more audio and video formats than the default music+videos app, but it still has its limitations. Of course, you also have the Windows Phone Store, with its slowly but steadily growing selection of apps and games.

While using the Lumia 1320, we faced exactly the same scaling problems with the interface as we did when testing the Lumia 1520: Windows Phone 8 was simply not designed with such large screens in mind, and as a result we were reaching around to opposite ends of the screen, using both thumbs, far more often than we would have liked. The keyboard occupies more than half the screen at times, and keys are far too widely spaced out. Those who type on touchscreens by pointing and stabbing with an index finger might actually like huge letters that are easy to target, but for everyone else, this makes life more difficult.

Camera
As stated earlier. The Lumia 1320 has none of its more illustrious sibling's camera pedigree. You won't find any of the PureView tricks here, such as a massive sensor, insane megapixel count or optical image stabilisation. For some reason even the default camera app is totally bare-bones. With that said, the 1320's camera is still fantastic.

Shots taken in daylight are surprisingly clear, with details that don't tear even when viewed at native size on a desktop monitor. Colours are rich and well reproduced. The camera app lets you adjust ISO, exposure compensation and white balance, but we downloaded Nokia Camera from the Store and played around with manual focus, shutter speed and brightness controls too (even though the effects weren't as dramatic as they can be on phones with better camera hardware).

Video is shot at 720p by default but can be manually set to 1080p. We found the quality of captured video to be perfectly acceptable. We had no problem with closeups or distant objects, and the 1320 adjusted itself to light and dark areas nicely.

At night, while results weren't as good, they were still better than we would have expected. However we noticed that even with the flash explicitly disabled, the Lumia 1320 would use its flash to illuminate a scene in order to autofocus, before taking the actual shot without it. Our photos turned out somewhat noisy, but surprisingly rich in detail.

Performance and battery life
We were quite pleased with the Lumia 1320's performance in our benchmark tests. Its AnTuTu score was 15,067 as opposed to the Lumia 1520's 22,793. WPbench gave the two siblings 299.38 and 477.88 respectively. SunSpider took 705.2ms to complete, compared to 535.5ms for the beefier Lumia. These results aren't too far apart, but there was a much wider gulf when it came to graphics performance. The 1320 managed only 7.1 frames per second in our GFXbench gaming simulation test, but the 1520 more than tripled that result, with a score of 25fps.

During the course of our time with this phone, we noticed only very slight lags in Windows Phone's animated transitions, and when loading apps and skipping up and down the timeline in our sample HD video clips. Everything else was smooth and responsive. The screen itself has rather poor viewing angles and colours will start to distort when you hold this phone even a little tilted.
We expected great things from the battery but even then we were blown away: the Lumia 1320 lasted for well over 12 hours in our video loop rundown test. This is a phenomenal result, and it means that this phone will last through well over a day of regular to heavy usage.

Verdict
If you're a fan of Windows Phone and want a large screen, you have a choice between the Lumia 1320 and the more compelling 1520 which costs twice as much. If you're primarily a fan of Windows Phone, the 1320 is the best bet in its price range, but you could also consider the more pocketable Lumia 925, which has a far better camera and costs roughly Rs. 6,000 more.

However, this phone doesn't compare too favourably to its Android-based competition, most notably the Samsung Galaxy Grand 2, which costs almost exactly the same amount. The Grand 2 benefits from the strength of the Google Play app store, and Nokia can't balance that out with its camera expertise at this price level, like it did with the Lumia 1520.

Overall, the Nokia 1320 Lumia is a fairly good option at its price point. Its only crime is that there isn't anything outstanding about it.

Nokia Lumia 1520 review

The Lumia 1520 has two big things working against it, neither of which is a deal-breaker on its own, but when combined, make it a very interesting product to review. First, it's a Windows Phone. While the platform certainly does have its fans, there's no denying that it isn't as versatile as iOS and Android yet. As a person buying this phone, you will have to put up with a number of limitations and frustrations because of its software. Second, it's huge. So-called "phablets" are big business, but not everybody wants a phone that can't fit in a pocket and be held in one hand. With that said, it's time to examine this phone on its own merits and see whether Nokia has managed to distinguish itself with a winner.

Look and feel

Nokia's first big-screened Lumia seems like a "me-too" product. Sensing that Android manufacturers have been making huge profits with such devices, they want in on the action. Luckily, both Microsoft and Nokia have been able to tweak their software and hardware manufacturing well in time to catch this wave. The Lumia 1520 isn't just a stretched-out version of any other model, although its bright polycarbonate shell fits right in with the rest of the Lumia lineup. We had the glossy red model in for review, and while we were impressed with the quality of materials and construction, we found it a bit too flashy. Other manufacturers' flagship devices use metal or more subtle coloured plastic, and it seems Nokia is specifically going after a young, outgoing sort of customer with its current design direction. The subtler matte finish of the white and black variants will have a much broader appeal.

The 1520 is a near-perfect rectangular slab with rounded edges and blunt pointy corners. The back is flat except for a roughly 1mm tall circular bump housing the rear camera's optics. On the whole, the body is impressively thin and still manages to be reassuringly strong when bent or flexed. The front face is made of toughened Gorilla Glass 2, which should be able to withstand a fair bit of abuse. The back is mostly blank, with only the camera lens, dual-LED flash, speaker grille and microphone array visible. Nokia's own branding and PureView logos are printed in a surprisingly subtle, light ink. On the right edge you'll find a volume control rocker, power button and camera button, while a Micro-USB port sits on the bottom and a standard 3.5mm headset jack is the only thing on top. The left edge has slots for your Nano-SIM and microSD cards, both covered by flaps that can be released with a pin or the included eject tool.


At 209g, the Lumia 1520 is the heftiest of its siblings. Its size and weight make it rather cumbersome to carry around and you won't be comfortable holding it in one hand for very long. For the purpose of comparison, Samsung's Galaxy Note 3 and HTC's One Max weigh in at 168g and 217g respectively. The weight and smooth glossy body make it very easy for this phone to slip out of a trouser pocket when you sit down, although you're unlikely to want to keep it in a pocket at all. Unless you wear a jacket or carry a bag every day, you'll probably end up carrying it in your hand.

Features and specificationsOn the inside, Nokia hasn't skimped on anything. The 1520 is powered by a top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC (system-on-a-chip), which consists of a Krait 400 CPU running at 2.2GHz and Adreno 330 graphics processor along with integrated LTE, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth communications modules. Pretty much every flagship smartphone on the market today and even a few tablets use this particular SoC, so the 1520 is in good company. 2GB of RAM should be more than enough for even the most demanding tasks, including recording continuous HD video and capturing 20-megapixel photos. The battery is non-removable, as is the norm these days. Nokia's ClearBlack IPS LCD is vivid and sharp, with a highly reflective surface. Colours don't pop as much as they do on some of the AMOLED screens used by competitors, which is a matter of personal preference.


The Lumia 1520's PureView camera is one of its biggest selling points, but it isn't the same record-setting 41-megapixel unit that first debuted with the Symbian-powered Nokia 808 and later re-emerged on the Lumia 1020. The 1020 thus remains Nokia's current flagship camera phone, which creates an odd division in their product lineup. The 1520 has better specifications all around, especially the screen and processor, but it doesn't get the benefit of what is easily Nokia's best innovation in the entire series. Nevertheless, this camera still bears the "PureView" tag, and with the combination of hardware and software used, you still get optical image stabilisation, the ability to record in RAW format, manual focus, ISO and shutter speed control, advanced post-capture editing options, and of course full-HD video recording at 30 frames per second.

Software
The Windows Phone environment is what truly sets the Lumia 1520 apart from all its big-screened rivals. Microsoft has managed to update the OS to work with large, pixel-dense screens, so everything looks crisp and slick. There's room for an extra column of medium-sized tiles on the home screen, and you can have a maximum of six small ones in a row. Most apps look great, especially ebook apps and games, but surfing the Web is a mixed bag since some sites default to a mobile layout, which just looks ridiculous on such a device.

The high resolution and pixel density help make Windows Phone's various pages full of thin typography feel less sparse, but the sheer size of the screen also amplifies the OS's annoyances, such as the excessive animations that accompany every screen transition and menu fly-out. Other little things matter too: menus roll up from the bottom of the screen but confirmation dialogs are displayed right on top, well beyond the reach of your thumb. You'll find yourself adjusting your grip on the 1520 every time you encounter things like this that just weren't designed with such a large screen in mind.

That brings us to the software's biggest flaw: Nokia and Microsoft haven't managed to figure out how to make a soft keyboard work on such a large device. The standard keyboard has simply been stretched to fill the screen's width, but it also retains its original proportions, resulting in keys that are too large and widely spaced for quick two-thumbed typing. This also means that when active, the keyboard obstructs well over half of the available vertical screen space, so while reading documents is a total pleasure, typing and editing are far more frustrating than they should be on such an otherwise capable device. The only people who would actually benefit from this are those who prefer hunt-and-peck typing with a single finger.

One of the platform's flagship features is MS Office integration. Apart from the keyboard issue, working with documents is a fantastic experience, and this is one of the best reasons to choose a big-screened phone. You can view Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, but creation is limited to Word and Excel. You can type out text documents just like notes, with a few limited formatting options, and create spreadsheets with formulas and even graphs. Again, we ran into limitations in the way that Windows Phone apps are designed: there's a lot of untapped potential given the 1520's screen and processor. Just to prove this point, we loaded the desktop version of SkyDrive in Internet Explorer. The integrated Office Online version of Word loaded perfectly, giving us a much fuller, more powerful tool on exactly the same hardware (although, to be fair, it involved a lot of pinching and zooming to actually make use of).




Microsoft includes a voice command feature that's far more basic than Siri on iOS and Android's integrated functions. You can basically only open apps and dial saved numbers, although third-party apps can also add their own commands. The feature is only notable because, at least with the default setting on our review unit, the phone responds to commands in an Indianised voice with overdone inflections. This might have been intended to make users here feel more comfortable, but it really does come across as cartoonish and patronising.

Nokia-specific tweaks
Microsoft's efforts have also been supplemented by Nokia in the form of several apps and tweaks, and the Lumia 1520 is the first device to ship with Nokia's latest "Black" software update preinstalled. The most useful of these is the Glance screen, which basically displays the time, phone status and notifications on the phone's lock screen persistently, even after the screen times out. Users of older Nokia Series 60 smartphones will find this familiar: it's exactly the same as the old "screensaver" feature, but now it's done by keeping the screen backlight very slightly illuminated. This might impact battery life to a very small extent, but Glance uses the phone's proximity sensor to turn itself off when it detects it's in a case or pocket. Similarly, since the power button won't always be easy to reach, you can wake the phone by double-tapping anywhere on the screen when it's asleep. Last but not least, Nokia has also decided to cater (or pander) to Indian buyers with a small collection of Indian ringtones, all of which sound like the background scores of incredibly cheesy tourism ads.


Camera
Nokia's historical strength in imaging has resulted in the truly excellent PureView series of camera phones, but it isn't only hardware that sets the company apart. Nokia knows perfectly well that a phone's camera is only as good as its interface. After having released a number of well-received camera apps, Nokia has decided to coalesce them all into a single one called -- what else -- Nokia Camera. This app replaces the default Windows Phone camera app, which is truly a blessing. In the default Still mode, you can quickly adjust settings for the flash, white balance, ISO, shutter speed and brightness. You can even manually focus an image as you'd like it. Nudging the shutter release icon inward makes a semi-transparent overlay appear over the display with crescent-shaped sliders for all these settings, and you can see how changing one value affects the others. If you push one too far, you'll see a red highlight and some of the others might become unavailable. This helps you use the best settings for normal shots, but also experiment with artistic ideas.


By default, the app is set to capture 16:9 photos at 16 megapixel resolution, but changing this to standard 4:3 actually nets you 19megapixel images, since these are essentially uncropped versions of the same frames. Smaller 5-megapixel versions of all shots are saved in addition to the full size, which are easier to email and upload via various apps. In fact the only way to get the original high-res versions of photos off the phone is to connect it to a PC via USB. In addition to JPG, you can choose to record files in the DNG RAW format, which is uncompressed and allows for much more flexible editing later on a PC (at the cost of enormous file sizes).

We were very pleased with the quality of shots captured with the Lumia 1520, both in daylight and at night. Zooming in to the full-resolution version of photos, we were able to expose minor imperfections such as JPEG artefacts and noise, but you'll rarely ever see these on screen. The luxury of having such a large image is that imperfections vanish when you scale downwards. It's possible to capture gorgeous macro shots, and of course being able to manually adjust focus is quite a thrill.



In video mode, you only have white balance and focus controls, and can use the flash for constant illumination. There is one neat feature, though: That array of microphones on the rear panel allows the phone to detect where the subjects you're filming are, and boost audio from them while diminishing background noise. Video is captured at 1080p, which can be stepped down to 720p, and 30 frames per second which can be changed to 25 and 24 fps if you prefer. Videos are just as crisp and clear as we expected, and the optical image stabilisation feature really does make a difference.


Finally, the third mode is what used to be Nokia's standalone Smart Camera app. In this mode, holding down the shutter button for a few seconds captures a series of frames in rapid succession. The phone then runs through a few processing algorithms and comes up with what it considers the best shot. You can swipe up and down to perform other tricks, such as superimposing multiple copies of a moving subject against a static background, blurring the background with only the subject in focus, and choosing the best combination of smiles from different frames. The Action Shot and Remove Moving Object modes only really work well when you can ensure that only one thing in the frame is moving, and that too at a particular speed. Playing with Smart Camera is a lot of fun, but it will take a bit of practice to get results that are as good as the ones in Nokia's tutorial and advertising materials.


There's one more photography feature in the form of a standalone app, or a "lens" that can be launched from within the camera app's menu, called Nokia Refocus. This app captures images while also saving information about the scene at multiple different focal lengths. After taking the photo, you can tap different parts of the frame to decide whether the foreground or background should be blurred or focussed. For no apparent reason, there's a trick within a trick here: you can also tap any object in the frame to preserve its colour, while everything else turns to black and white. It's a neat effect, but it's best when used sparingly and subtly.

Other appsNokia's other big software selling point is the Here maps app with Drive+ global navigation directions. At least as far as larger cities go, we found the maps to be accurate and useful. Although the maps aren't as detailed as Google's, Nokia should get more credit than it does for its mapping features, especially the directions that include options for walking, driving, and public transport. You can check for updated maps and also save them to the device so you aren't dependent on an Internet connection, which frequent travellers will appreciate. The My Commute feature lets your phone learn where you travel from and to frequently, and it will calculate the best route for you and alert you to bad traffic conditions on any given day. You can pin a special My Commute live tile to the phone's Start screen to stay informed of traffic conditions on the way.

Nokia Beamer is a hidden gem that links your phone to a service that you can access in any Web browser on any other device, and simply mirrors the contents of your screen to it. You can pair the phone by pointing its camera at a QR code displayed on the target machine's screen, after which pairing is effortless. Visuals are transmitted through the Internet, so don't expect perfectly clear video unless you have superfast Internet connections for both the phone and the target device.

Performance and ratingsAs expected, the Lumia 1520 sailed through our synthetic benchmarks. We don't anticipate any problem running current or future apps, even graphically intensive ones. Games look incredible on the full-HD screen, which wasn't a surprise either. We noticed a few issues, such as a portion of the screen being cut off in one game, and visible tearing in another. We hope this is just a matter of developers optimising their titles for the new hardware, because the Lumia 1520 certainly has the potential to be a gaming powerhouse.


In our subjective analysis, the points that stood out were the device's build quality, overall screen quality, and the performance of the camera hardware and software. We gave it lower marks for UI design, ergonomics, and the quality of its app ecosystem. The Lumia 1520 is ultimately an unbalanced device, with extremely powerful hardware and software that doesn't yet take advantage of it.

Battery life is solid, and we had no problems with normal day-to-day usage, which consisted of receiving calls plus a few hours of watching videos, playing games, and browsing the Web over Wi-Fi. We did notice that the enormous 3400mAh battery takes a really long time to charge up to 100 percent. Our formal video loop test returned a result of 10 hours and 20 minutes, which is quite respectable.

VerdictIf you want a Windows Phone with a supersized high-resolution screen, this is currently the only game in town. Nokia is the only manufacturer truly committed to Windows Phone, and with its acquisition by Microsoft now complete, it's unlikely that any other company will bother developing such a device. The Lumia 1520 retails for roughly the same street price as the Lumia 1020, and both could be described as flagships of the line, depending on your priorities. The 1020's camera is simply unbeatable, and is the only thing keeping the 1520 from dominating the specifications charts in every category. However, the 1520's screen and nearly all its internal components are a generation ahead of the 1020's.

Incidentally, most of the things we loved about the software such as the Glance screen, integrated camera app and Beamer app are contained in Nokia's "Black" update, which means they'll be rolling out to other Lumias shortly. It's also worth noting that Windows Phone 8.1 is expected in the second quarter of this year. While we don't have any clear indications as to what features and improvements it will bring, it's also likely that a new generation of phones will launch alongside it. The Lumia 1520 will almost certainly receive this update too, but we're not convinced it will have a very long shelf life, and that makes it even harder to recommend.

So this is easily the most powerful Windows Phone we've ever used, but does that make it a great phone? We're hesitant to make a recommendation. If you love giant phones, there are quite a few Android options with screens and hardware that match the Lumia 1520, and they have the benefit of better optimised software and a far more substantial library of apps. If you love Windows Phone, there are cheaper options. The Lumia 1520 does stand out when it comes to its camera and looks, but you'd have to be pretty passionate about either of those things to spend close to Rs. 50,000 on this phone.

Nokia Lumia 1020 review

The Lumia 1020 is the spiritual successor to Nokia's first phone with a 41-megapixel camera sensor, the Nokia 808 PureView. While the 808 won rave reviews for its camera, the fact that it ran the dated Symbian operating system on underpowered hardware had many wondering - "What if this phone (rather, this camera) ran Windows Phone?" In that respect, the Nokia Lumia 1020 is the realisation of a dream that many have harboured since using the 808.

Sadly, many dreams shatter on their first contact with reality. Is the Lumia 1020 one of those dreams or does this story have a happy ending, let's find out.

Build/ Design
Nokia Lumia 1020 inherits characteristics of other members of the Lumia family, with a polycarbonate body that looks and feels premium. The layout of buttons and other ports is pretty standard as well, with the volume controls, power and dedicated camera buttons on the right edge. The top edge has the headphones port and the micro-SIM slot, while the bottom has the Micro-USB port, loudspeaker and a lanyard slot. The three standard Windows Phone buttons lie below the display and the Search button is as useless as ever, pointing to Bing instead of universal search, a long-standing gripe of ours with Windows Phone devices.

The back of the Lumia 1020 looks different from its Lumia cousins, thanks largely to the 41-megapixel camera module that sticks out of the back. However, the bulge is not as big a problem with the 1020 as it was with the Nokia 808 PureView. The 808 was not the easiest phone to carry around, measuring 13.95mm at its thinnest and 17.95mm thick at the camera module. The Lumia 1020, however, is just 10.40mm at its thickest (you guessed it, the camera module), and the bulge as compared to the rest of the body is not as pronounced as the one in the 808. However, the phone is unable to lie flat on its back; instead it rests at an angle that makes it easier to glance the screen if you are looking from front, an unintended benefit. The phone weighs 158 grams, but doesn't feel too heavy.

The Lumia 1020 is available in Black and White colour options, in addition to the Yellow that we received as our review unit.

Display
The Nokia Lumia 1020 comes with a 4.5-inch (768x1280 pixel) ClearBlack AMOLED display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and a pixel density of 334 pixels per inch. While the resolution and pixel density might be dwarfed on paper when compared to the likes of HTC One, in real world usage, most are unlikely to notice a difference. The display on the 1020 is bright and the colour reproduction closer to the real world when compared with most other AMOLED displays, similar to what we noted in our Nokia Lumia 925 review.

Nokia claims that its ClearBlack technology ensures that users see truer blacks, which in turn enhances the contrast of the display, thanks mainly to reduced reflections on the screen. The result is a screen that is easy to use, even in bright sunlight.

The screen comes with Nokia's super sensitive touch technology which means that the touchscreen can be operated even while wearing gloves or by using a pen as a stylus.

Camera
Needless to say, the highlight of the Nokia Lumia 1020 is its 41-megapixel camera, so we'll be focusing most of our energy on this section. While the sensor inside the Lumia 1020 is 41-megapixel, the pictures it clicks are either 38-megapixel or 34-megapixel, depending upon if you are clicking pictures in 4:3 mode or 16:9, similar to what we saw in the Nokia 808 PureView. If you are curious why this is the case, refer to our Nokia 808 review for a detailed explanation.

Nokia Lumia 1020 packs in a six-element lens array and a BSI (Back Side Illuminated) sensor, a shift from the five-element lens array and FSI (Front Side Illuminated) sensor found in the 808. It also comes with a wider f/2.2 aperture, compared to the f/2.4 in the 808. Another significant improvement in the 1020 is the addition of Optical Image Stabilisation that has been found to be working really well on the likes of Nokia Lumia 925.

While Nokia has worked hard to improve the hardware behind the camera, the software side seems to have regressed a bit. The default camera app on the Lumia 1020 is Nokia Pro Cam that seems to be lacking a few options found in the year-old Nokia. With the 808 you could choose to simultaneously click photographs in 2-megapixel, 3-megapixel, 5-megapixel or 8-megapixel effective resolutions, in addition to 34-megapixel or 38-megapixel full blown images. With the 1020, however, you are limited to a 5-megapixel image in addition to the 34-megapixel (16:9 mode) and 38-megapixel (4:3 mode) full-sized image.

Further, you get to see only the 5-megapixel version of your images while browsing the gallery, and the photos that get automatically uploaded to SkyDrive (should you chose to do so) are 5-megapixel. While it's understandable that Nokia doesn't offer the option of uploading full-resolution images over cellular data, an option to have these photos saved to SkyDrive over Wi-Fi could've been provided as a workaround. In fact, the only way to even see the full-resolution images on the phone is to open them for editing within the app. Even then, you have to crop the image to a smaller size to do anything meaningful with it, like sharing. Alternatively, you can connect the phone to a PC, when you'll get to see that every photo clicked using Nokia Pro Cam in the dual 5-megapixel and 34-/38-megapixel mode, actually has two images corresponding with it.

Having said that, Nokia Pro Cam offers plenty of control to experienced users letting them adjust the exposure, shutter speed, ISO, white balance and, of course, focus as per their needs. This can be done using controls at the top right (while holding the phone in landscape mode) of the screen or by dragging the on-screen click button to the left to reveal a grid of circular lines. The app also gives a live preview of how the resultant image would look when you, say, adjust the white balance. The app also offers options for shutter delay and exposure bracketing, which can be used for creating manual HDR images.

Coming back to the in-app editor that we touched upon briefly, it lets you open full-resolution images and zoom in and out to get exactly what you were looking for. This works pretty well and is a good way of discovering details that perhaps weren't even visible to the naked eye while clicking the photograph. As While cropping the image, called reframing, you even have the option to change its aspect ration to one of 3:2, 1:1, 4:3 or 16:9. This is 'lossless zoom' as Nokia intended.

Perhaps the biggest downside of the Nokia Pro Camera app is the 3-4 seconds time that it takes to save a photo. We initially believed it was down to the fact that the app is saving high resolution photos in addition to the 5-megapixel shots, but even switching to 5-megapixel mode only made the process only marginally faster. It seems all that oversampling involved is taking its toll on the phone, leading to the lag. Add to this the fact that the app takes around 2-3 seconds to be ready to click a photo when launched, and it means that if you are looking to capture a moment in a hurry, you are better off sticking to the native Windows Phone Camera app, which is must faster to load and does not lag while capturing either. Once we realised this, we mapped our hardware camera button to open the native Camera app and left Nokia Pro Camera on our home screen. This made our journey from the lock screen to capturing much faster.

Nokia Pro Cam is one of the many camera apps (or lenses as they are called in Windows Phone) installed on the Lumia 1020 and that can be a little confusing for users. You can switch to any of these apps by clicking the switch lens button on the bottom right of the screen, but remember that only the Nokia Pro Cam can take 34-/38-megapixel pictures. The other lenses (apps) that the Lumia 1020 ships with are Bing Vision, Camera360, the default Windows Phone Camera, Nokia Cinemagraph, Nokia Smart Cam, Panorama and Vyclone.

Nokia Smart Cam clicks a series of photos in burst mode and then recommends the best photo(s). It even lets you mix and match elements from different shots to come up with the perfect shot. Vyclone is a video editing tool, Cinemagraph lets you create small animations from your images, while Camera360 lets you apply various effects to your photos and share them on various social networks. As we noted in our Lumia 720 review, Panorama lens is perhaps the worst way to create panoramic pictures we've come across in recent times and, sadly, nothing's changed on that front.

If, like most smartphone users, you click photos in full-auto mode, trusting the phone to take the best decisions for you in terms of settings, then you'll find that the pictures clicked by the Lumia 1020 are a bit of a hit and miss. When the PureView gods are smiling on you and everything falls into place, the resultant images are crisp and have plenty of detail. However, on several occasions we found the images clicked by the phone to lack detail, when compared to ones clicked by the iPhone 5s and even the year-old iPhone 5.

Having said that, if you feel right at home adjusting the likes of exposure settings and white balance before hitting that camera button, you'll find the Lumia 1020 to be a delight. Images clicked in manual mode turn out as good, if not better than any other smartphone out there.

Low-light photography is pretty good as well, and we dare say more to our taste than the likes of Lumia 925 that have a way of capturing stuff that even human eye can't see. Call us crazy, but we find that a little unnerving. While we are on the subject, though we have a strict no-flash policy while capturing photos, we realise that most people never change away from the Auto mode, and thus put the flash to good use. There's good news on that front as the Xenon flash on the Lumia 1020 is perhaps the best we've come across date. The flash lights up the subjects in an even and powerful fashion, minus the glare that is associated with a typical flash.

Another thing that the Lumia 1020 has going in its favour is the large field of view compared to most other phones. This means that the phone is able to capture an image that is wider as well as taller than most smartphones.

The Lumia 1020 is capable of recording full-HD (1920 x 1080) videos at 30 frames per second. The quality of videos is excellent, with Nokia's Rich Recording technology earning its money with an ability to capture crisp audio even in noisy outdoor conditions.

The front camera can capture 720p video and is as capable front shooter as we've come across in a smartphone.

Software
Nokia Lumia 1020 comes with the Windows Phone 8 Amber update and the overall software experience is no different from its siblings. Nokia bundles many of its own apps to enhance the core Windows Phone functionality, and we've documented our fondness for the Drive app before, which we believe is a worthy competitor to Google Maps. For a detailed look at the Amber update and the new features/ apps that it brings, please refer to our Lumia 625 review.

The most notable additions in the 1020 to the apps that are available in other Lumia smartphone apps are the imaging-related apps that we've covered in the Camera section above.

Overall, the Amber update doesn't do anything to address many of our complaints related to Windows Phone like the lack of a notification centre or the fact that platform is still not a priority for developers, as shown by the absence of apps like Instagram. Even popular apps like Facebook that have a presence on Windows Phone lack features compared to their iOS or Android counterparts.

Performance/ Battery Life
Windows Phone 8-based smartphone rarely have performance issues, and the Lumia 1020 is no exception. It is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor alongside 2GB RAM that handles everything you throw at it pretty smoothly, other than the lags in the Nokia Pro Cam we talked about earlier - whether beefed up hardware would've minimised the delay or if that's entirely a software issue, is something Nokia would know best.

Browsing is good, and the web pages render quickly, but yet again we run into Windows Phone 8 limitations like the fact we can't have more than 6 tabs open at the same time. On a machine with plenty of RAM, that seems artificially crippling. All games and apps we tried run smoothly, but then there are no Infinity Blade-equivalents on Windows Phone to push the hardware to its limit, so other than a few games that require a certain amount of RAM to run, the experience on a phone like the 1020 is not very much different from its entry-level Windows Phone siblings.

The Lumia 1020 comes with 32GB of non-expandable storage, with 29.12GB available for the end user. While that seems like plenty of storage, on a phone that captures large-sized images, an option to have expandable storage would've been nice. In case you are wondering, the 1020 comes with FM radio support, which can be utilised thanks to the pre-installed Amber Update.

For most users, the Nokia Lumia 1020 would easily last a day on a single charge, even if connected to a 3G network throughout. However, if you go on a clicking spree during the day, you will find yourself reaching for the charger quicker than you may think.

Verdict
Nokia Lumia 1020 is priced at Rs. 49,999 which makes it slightly more expensive than the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, and considerably pricier than other flagship devices like the Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One, Sony Xperia Z1 and Sony Xperia Z Ultra. Nokia can thank Apple for small mercies, which announced a Rs. 53,500 price tag for the iPhone 5s earlier this week, making the Lumia 1020 the second-most expensive smartphone available right now.

It is fair to say, that as far as the overall experience is concerned, the Lumia 1020 is inferior to all other smartphones mentioned above. If you are willing to spend Rs. 50,000 on a smartphone, you don't need to look beyond the iPhone 5s, which is superior to the Lumia 1020 in all respects, and as we noted in our Camera section, perhaps a better everyday camera for most users, despite 1020's obviously superior imagining capabilities that need an experienced hand to make the best use.

We've documented shortcomings of Windows Phone earlier, and the Lumia 1020 inherits all of them, with the OS only now getting ready to support full-HD screens and other top of the line specs that have been found in Android phones for a while. You can argue that the iPhone 5s doesn't compete on specs either, but the app ecosystem and overall experience on iOS is unrivalled. So if Windows Phone doesn't compete on hardware, the ecosystem, and, with the 1020, not even the price, it's hard to make a strong case for it.

Yes, shutterbugs will love the Lumia 1020 camera, but at the price tag one has to wonder if they are perhaps better off buying a point-and-shoot camera, which are getting smaller, easier to carry bodies and bigger sensors, and a mid-level smartphone. If you want one that runs Windows Phone, pick the Nokia Lumia 720, which is still our favourite Windows Phone running device, or the Nokia Lumia 920 which is now reportedly available at heavy discounts compared to its launch price.

Nokia 'Superman' reportedly the first selfie-focused Windows Phone

We have seen in the past a number of handset makers releasing smartphones with advanced rear camera capabilities (and a few exceptional ones with swivel-based cameras serving both sides). However, if a new report is to be believed, Nokia might change this paradigm with its upcoming selfie focused Windows Phone device, believed to be dubbed Nokia 'Superman'.

The Verge reports that one of the first Windows Phone 8.1 devices expected to release post Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's handset business will come with front-facing camera functionalities. The report citing some sources familiar with the matter claim that the alleged Nokia 'Superman' is currently under development and sports a 5-megapixel camera at the front. Notably, the recently unveiled HTC One (M8) also packs a 5-megapixel front camera.

Further, the report claims that the rumoured Nokia 'Superman' will come with a 4.7-inch display and can be expected to launch by end of this year. The report also talks about upcoming two Windows Phone 8.1 updates that it believes will be released this year. Recently, a Redditor who claimed to be a veteran of 15 years at Microsoft, pointed to some of features that would supposedly arrive in the next version of Windows Phone OS, said to be called Windows Phone 8.2 or Windows Phone 9.

The Verge speculates that two new updates to Windows Phone 8.1 updates will be rolled out alongside new handsets in 2014, and will be released for existing devices later. The first update might be rolled out in July, while the Nokia 'Superman' is likely to be introduced with the second update at a later time.

The report also suggests that more handsets such as the long-rumoured Nokia 'Goldfinger' might also see the light of the day soon. Earlier report had claimed the alleged Goldfinger is the flagship device and would come with Nokia's '3D Touch' technology, which the company has been working on for long.

As of now, there is no word whether these handsets (Nokia Superman, Nokia Goldfinger) will be launched with Nokia branding as Nokia's phone business was recently renamed to Microsoft Mobile.

Nokia has been busy with completion of the sale of its phone business division to Microsoft, and with the new appointment of its new President and CEO of Nokia Corporation, Rajeev Suri.

Nokia Lumia 1020: First Impressions

The Nokia Lumia 1020 is one of Nokia's path breaking products. The company has been focusing on innovation in imaging technology, and the first smartphone to showcase it was the Nokia PureView 808, which was based on the ageing Symbian platform. Nokia decided to abandon Symbian and switch to Windows Phone but it took the company some time to bring the PureView technology to the new platform, despite using the PureView branding with some of the early Lumia Windows Phone-powered devices to highlight their special camera features which included low-light imaging and optical image stabilisation.

The Lumia 1020 is the first Windows Phone smartphone to bring the PureView 808's oversampling technology with its 41-megapixel rear camera. It also includes a Xenon flash which was last seen in the 808. The phone was launched with much fanfare in New York, in July and after almost two months, Nokia has brought the Lumia 1020 to India.

We were able to spend some time with the phone during the launch event and here are our first impressions.

The Nokia Lumia 1020 looks strikingly similar to the Lumia 920 at first glance. The Lumia 1020 features the similar unibody design and a polycarbonate shell as the Lumia 920.The two sport very similar dimensions, with the Lumia 1020 slightly thinner (at 10.4mm, compared to 10.7mm), and quite a bit lighter (158 grams, compared to 185 grams).

The front of the Lumia 1020 is dominated by a 4.5-inch AMOLED display which features Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection and Nokia's ClearBack and PureMotion HD+ technology. The display looks crisp and bright with colours appearing to be really vivid. It's worth pointing out that the screen sports a resolution of 768x1280 pixels and pixel density of 334ppi.

The right side of the Lumia 1020 features three hardware buttons, namely the volume rocker key, the power/screen-lock key and the camera shutter key, all made of plastic. The keys are black in colour, and offer good tactile feedback.

The bottom of the Lumia 1020 features the Micro-USB port and a speaker-grill, while the top houses the 3.5mm headset jack, and the micro-SIM card slot. There are no ports or buttons on the left hand side of the phone.

With the Lumia 1020, Nokia proudly proclaims that the 'rear is the new front,' and that clearly shows on the device. The phone's rear sports a big camera lens at the back that protrudes out. It might feel a bit awkward but we have to keep in mind that this is a camera-focused smartphone. In fact, the camera is the star.

The camera ring is black in colour and features a mechanical shutter, a Xenon flash and an LED light for videos and auto focus assist. After spending some time with it, we have to say that the camera hump on the back is not very obstructing and the phone can be easily carried in a pocket.

The Lumia 1020 runs Windows Phone 8's Amber build. It features double tap to unlock, FM radio and other features in addition to standard Windows Phone 8 goodies. The phone also offers the Nokia Pro Camera app which has been created specifically for it. The app allows users to tinker with all camera settings just like professional cameras leveraging the power of Lumia 1020's 41-megapixel lens. At the same time, it makes easy for amateurs to take great pictures. We did notice some lag while clicking pictures. Nokia has announced that the phone will be available starting October 11 and it will announce the pricing a day prior to it. We'll have a detailed review as soon as we get a review unit.