Finally got my hands on the Nokia Lumia 1520… Playing around with this device and taking it to its limits, all I can say is that, it’s pretty classy and powerful! (And yes, my last Nokia Phone was the 3310 – Definitely come a long way since then)
I currently own a Samsung Galaxy S5. My previous mobile phone was a Samsung Galaxy S4 – So yeah, I’m pretty much a Samsung (Android) boy!
Personally, I feel the Nokia Lumia 1520 is just about the biggest and most significant Windows Phone release to date. It’s gorgeous to the eye, packs in all the latest hardware and spec, features an impressive 20MP PureView camera and features, perhaps, the best display ever bundled on a Nokia phone.
The Lumia 1520 runs the latest version of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 platform, dubbed “Black”. There’s plenty more to get excited about too, though. The performance has been bumped up to the Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 CPU – Quadcore 2.2Ghz. Yes, it has the same processor as the Galaxy Note 3, but Windows Phone 8’s version of Internet Explorer is a particularly fast browser.
Unlike other high-end Lumias such as the 1020, the 1520 has an IPS rather than AMOLED screen. It’s a 6in model with a 1,920×1,080 resolution, and there are significant image quality differences between the Lumia 1520 and 1020’s displays. The 1020’s AMOLED panel has more saturated colours and blacker text than the 1520’s IPS model, but the 1020’s screen is much warmer, to the point of appearing slightly yellow when side by side with the 1520. The 1520’s panel has purer whites, but if anything is too cold, giving web pages backgrounds a slightly grey tint. It’s still a high-quality screen, though, and compares well to the best IPS panels we’ve seen, such as that on the Google Nexus 7 tablet.
There’s only one storage variant available for the Lumia 1520 with 32GB onboard and microSD support for cards up to 64GB. That’s really not a bad setup at all with stacks of space on the device and room for expansive multimedia collections on cards, so Nokia really has got all the necessary bases covered here.
Like other premium-grade manufacturers in the industry, Nokia’s got pretty good at bundling in a very capable set of connectivity options, particularly in higher-tier devices such as this one. The Lumia 1520 has full 4G LTE and 3G HSPA+ mobile data capabilities as well as dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac with Hotspot and in all cases it’s very good at maintaining a fast connection. Other connectivity options include NFC, microUSB, GPS, and Bluetooth 4.0.
The onboard battery is non-removbable, owing to the fact the phone uses a sealed unibody chassis design. It’s a 3,400mAh unit and this delivers similar performance to what we’ve seen from rival devices using equally large 3,000mAh+ setups. Like the Galaxy Note 3, HTC One Max and Xperia Z1, the Lumia 1520 is able to last a couple of full days on a single charge with light-to-moderate use. Expect this to be reduced by intensive browsing, gaming, video or messaging.
The 1520 is a classy phone all round, though, and even trumps the metal-bodied HTC One Max for build quality. It’s a unibody design with a single piece of polycarbonate wrapping around the back and screen, and just feels lovely to hold. Great grip!
All, in all, apart from the screen size – I think this device is a pleasure to use. Great performance! Exceptional quality! Definitely a thumbs up from me! 😉
