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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment