Hands-on with the Nokia Lumia 1020.

Smartphone cameras have drastically changed in the past few years. Most smartphone cameras have improved so much that most people use their smartphone as their main camera. Some companies have decided to make cameras with fewer megapixels and better sensors, while most smartphone manufactures have improved their cameras by adding more megapixels. Nokia is one of these people and they have proven it even more with their latest smartphone, the Nokia Lumia 1020.

Look and Feel

Nokia's Lumia line of handsets has some of the most unique hardware on the market. If you see something that looks like a Nokia phone on the street, there is a pretty good chance that it is a Nokia. Nokia pioneered the unibody polycarbonate design, and is pretty close to perfecting it. Their Lumia line is full of beautiful, colorful, and unique polycarbonate bodies. The Lumia 1020 does not stray too far away from its siblings. The 1020 comes in three gorgeous colors; matte white, black, and yellow. We spent a few moments with the matte yellow version, and we are very impressed. The matte finish makes the handset feel premium, and the yellow adds a bit of fun. Although the yellow finish is not quite as bright as the 920's yellow, it is still unique enough to get you noticed in a sea of black and white smartphones. The Lumia 1020 is on the thicker end of the smartphone landscape, but its curved sides help to improve the ergonomics. On top of the 1020 lies the headphone jack, secondary microphone, and the SIM card tray. A tour around the right and bottom sides reveals the volume rocker, lock button, camera button, speaker, FCC logos, and a lanyard loop for your various cell phone charms. The left side is completely barren, and allows you to hold the device comfortably in your left hand. This button arrangement is unsurprisingly similar to other Windows Phone handsets.

Overall the Nokia Lumia 1020 has very nice hardware. The matte polycarbonate body feels premium, and can stand out from the rest of the smartphone crowd. The plastic design also makes the handset slightly more durable than the iPhone 5 and HTC One. The matte finish makes it feel extremely more premium than anything Samsung offers. We are looking at you, Galaxy S4. There are very few complaints we can make about the Lumia 1020's design. One thing that we would want is more colors. Nokia offers a wide array of colors on its Lumia 920, 620, and 520, but only gives the 1020 three color options. These colors do look nice, but variety is always welcomed. Another complaint we have is how thick the device is. Even though it is slightly thinner than the Lumia 920, it is still thick compared to other flagships. The thickness is probably because of the massive camera that Nokia stuffed into it, but it still could feel a little better. Since the camera is so big, it takes up most of the area that your fingers would naturally be. During the few moments that we spent handling the 1020, our fingers brushed against the camera numerous times. This might scratch up the camera, smudge it, and make it more difficult to take those amazing pictures. The large camera also stops you from putting the phone flat on its back, which is not that much of a problem. The Nokia Lumia 1020 has a great design, and manages to fit a massive camera without too many trade-offs.

Full Gallery of Tech & Co. hands-on with the Nokia Lumia 1020

Software

Windows Phone 8 is almost exactly the same on any device that has it. The only customizations that companies have made is that they sometimes install a few extra apps. Most of the time, the apps are useful and somewhat improve Windows Phone 8. Nokia adds some of its own apps to its Windows Phone handsets, and they are actually very nice. Nokia Drive, City Lens, and the Pro Camera app help to improve your Windows Phone experience. The Pro Camera app is leaps and bounds ahead of the stock Windows Phone 8 camera app, and lets you take advantage of the amazing 41 megapixel camera. You can change the exposure, ISO, white balance, and many other things to help you take fantastic pictures. We did not have too much time with the Pro Camera app, but we did spend enough time with it to be very impressed. Nokia has made all the settings you could possibly want available, and they made it very simple to use. As for Windows Phone 8, there is not much to complain about. Windows Phone 8's flat Metro UI looks fantastic and performs great on all devices, and it presents a large amount of information at a glance. The one huge flaw with Windows Phone 8 is its app ecosystem.

While some of the big ticket apps such as Twitter, Foursquare, and Facebook are there, many other important apps are missing. Google+, Instagram, and Gmail are some apps that are noticeably absent from the Windows Phone marketplace. Yes there are some third party apps for these services, yes these are not the only services out there, and blah blah blah, but this is an issue. It is not that these are the best of these services, but these apps are what the people want. There are many other picture sharing websites, but Instagram is the most popular and the one that is actually used. Gmail is not the only great email client (Outlook is pretty nice), but it is one of the most popular email services. Most people are not going over to Windows Phone 8 devices because of missing apps. Once Windows Phone 8 gets most of the important apps that iOS and Android have, Nokia should have no problem selling their handsets.

Display

If you look at all the Windows Phone 8 devices in the world, you will find only three resolutions on their screens. 800 x 480 WVGA screens for the low-end devices, 1,280 x 720 for most of the high-end phones, and 1,280 x 768 for the companies that think 1,280 x 720 is too mainstream. Just like the Lumia 920, the Nokia Lumia 1020 has a 4.5 inch 1,280 x 768 display. The display is actually more similar to the Lumia 928 on Verizon and the Lumia 925, since it uses an OLED display instead of an LCD. The OLED display is surprisingly an improvement over the 920's LCD by offering more vibrant colors and darker blacks. Since blacks on OLED displays are pixels turned off, an OLED display is more efficient than a LCD and helps to improve battery life. As for normal use, the display is definitely the best screen on a Windows Phone 8 device. Colors are vibrant, accurate, and blacks are dark abysses right in front of you. Viewing angles are also nice; the screen always displayed accurate colors and blacks no matter how far we tilted it. While the pixel density is perfectly fine, it cannot compete with most of the Android flagships. Most of the Android flagships that matter have 1080p screens with pixel densities of 400+ pixels per inch. This is only a minor nitpick, but it is something to consider when shopping for your next smartphone. The Nokia Lumia 1020 may not have the best display on the market, but it is definitely one of the best and the best on a Windows Phone.

Performance

Performance is a somewhat difficult thing to determine on a Windows Phone 8 handset. Since the operating system is so light and efficient, it can run on a wide range of hardware. The operating system's speed will be the same whether you are using a 1GHZ 512MB of RAM device like the Lumia 620, or the 1.5GHZ 2GB of RAM Lumia 1020. We experienced no lag while touring around the phone's operating system, or while jumping in and out of apps. Apps also loaded quickly, and browsing the internet was a great experience. The 2 gigabytes of RAM was probably put in the 1020 to help the massive camera, and we can see it in the camera app. You can immediately see the changes you made while changing the settings, and pictures are snapped just as fast as any other smartphone. Based on reviews of the Nokia Lumia 1020 and our time with it, we can tell you that the camera is absolutely amazing. The 38 megapixel shots we took (you can not take 41 megapixel shots since the circle lens cuts off some of the square sensor) immediately looked better than anything else we have seen from a smartphone. There is an immense amount of detail in every shot, and everything else about it is the closest to perfect you can get on a smartphone. Colors were accurate, the white balance was spot on, and you can easily change the settings if you do not like your shot. The immense amount of detail makes for lossless zoom in all of your shots. This means that you can zoom in all you want, and still have a crisp picture. Although you can do this with the 1020, Nokia recommends that you do not do this. Instead of zooming in and then taking your picture, Nokia recommends that you take the shot and zoom in after instead. Since you have so many megapixels at your disposal, you can take the shot and zoom in after while getting just the same, if not better, results as if you zoomed in first. Since all the pictures you will take with the Lumia 1020 have so much detail, you might think that uploading them will eat through your data cap. This is somewhat true, but Nokia made a way that will prevent this. Every time you take a shot, the 1020 also takes a lower-resolution five megapixel picture. This is done with oversampling, which combines the pixels from the 38 megapixel shot into the smaller five megapixel size. This will help you upload your fantastic shots, and be able to use your data. Even though the camera is the best one on a smartphone, it will not replace your DSLR.

Yes the Lumia 1020 has a huge camera and sensor. Yes it has more megapixels than most stand alone camera, but this does not make it a replacement for said camera. Even though the sensor is large, it is tiny compared to the ones on mirrorless cameras and DSLRs. This means that you cannot get as good of pictures from the 1020 as a DSLR or mirrorless camera. Your pictures from the 1020 will always be better than any smartphone, but they will not come close to a stand alone camera. LTE perfomance on the 1020 is great. Although we did not get to measure the download and upload speeds, the 1020 was very speedy when we tested it over AT&T's LTE network in Sacramento. Internet apps opened and loaded information briskly, and browsing the internet was a breeze. The Nokia Lumia 1020 can handle everything you throw at it, and will probably never choke up on you.

Wrap-up

The Nokia Lumia 1020 is in a pickle. It has some of the best hardware, software additions, display, and camera of any other Windows Phone, and it is an overall joy to use. We would go as far to say that it is the best Windows Phone 8 device on the market today, and that we would not mind owning one ourselves. Despite these great things about the 1020, we can not recommend it to everyone. The main reason why this is not our number one smartphone is because of what Windows Phone 8 offers. Yes it is good looking, fast, and efficient, but it does not have the apps. Many of the most popular apps are missing from the Windows Phone marketplace, and most of the apps missing are the ones that people want and use. This means that it will be very hard for any iOS or Android user to transition to the Windows Phone 8 platform. These two operating systems make up most of the market, which makes many people not able to be happy with the 1020. Hopefully Microsoft will get its stuff together and get people to make the apps that we want to Windows Phone. If you are a Windows Phone user or fan, the 1020 is the phone you should buy. Sure other phones might have better ergonomics and a better design, but the 1020 has an amazing camera and display that is enough to beat these shortcomings. If you are in the market for a Windows Phone smartphone, go out and buy the 1020 right now. If you are an iOS or Android user, we cannot recommend the 1020 to you just yet. Interested in Nokia's megapixel beast? Want to learn more about it? Check out the source links below for reviews and more information on the Nokia Lumia 1020.


Reviews: Engadget Nokia Lumia 1020 review, The Verge Nokia Lumia 1020 review