Design-wise, the Lumia 1020 is the natural successor to the Lumia 920. Just like that handset, it’s constructed from a single block of high-quality plastic, with gently curved sides and squared-off ends. As we’d expect from Nokia’s flagship handset, it feels extremely sturdy, and it’s available in a variety of colours (yellow, white and black). We love the bright yellow of our review sample, and it feels fantastic in the hand – the silky, matte finish is a cut above most other smartphones.
The one thing we’d worried about in the build up to the launch of the 1020 was how Nokia would manage to squeeze such a large camera unit in and keep the size down; after all, the sensor’s larger than the average smartphone's is, and it comes complete with optical image stabilisation. However, we needn’t have concerned ourselves: the 1020 weighs 158g, which although heavy by the standards of the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S4, is 26g lighter than the 920.
Despite this, nothing’s missing from the specifications list – aside from wireless charging, and we’re not too bothered by that. Otherwise, it’s all familiar stuff: a 4.5in 768 x 1,280 OLED display with a subtly curved Gorilla Glass front; a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 CPU; 2GB of RAM; and 4G compatibility.
Camera
If you’re interested in the 1020, though, it won’t be for the design – it’s all about the monstrous 41-megapixel snapper strapped to the back.
The 1020 uses a 2/3in, backside-illuminated, 41-megapixel sensor to produce 34-megapixel images at an aspect ratio of 16:9, or 38-megapixel photos at 4:3. It has a Carl Zeiss-branded, f/2.2 lens; a shutter speed range of 1/4,000s to 4s; an ISO range of 100 to 4000; and the ability to manually adjust focus, adjust the white balance and set exposure compensation between -3 and +3EV in 1/3 stop steps.
All the settings described above can be adjusted manually, via the intuitive, translucent, dial-based interface of Nokia’s Pro Camera app. This delivers the sort of control normally associated with enthusiast compact cameras and DSLRs. There’s also an optional camera grip, which costs £50, that snaps onto the front and adds a supplementary battery, a tripod thread and a larger, two-stage shutter button.
It’s impressive stuff, and all this control has obvious benefits, such as the ability to limit noise by keeping the ISO low, or to freeze fast action by setting the shutter speed high. The advantages of the super-high 41-megapixel resolution are initially less clear, though. You certainly don’t need this sort of resolution to post to Facebook or Twitter, and you don’t need it for print, either.
In practice, the main bonus of having all those pixels is the ability to zoom into a scene without the need for bulky optics – a problem on the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom – or quality-reducing interpolation, which is the method most other smartphones use.
This can be achieved in-shot, by dragging a thumb up and down on the display, or by cropping into the image after snapping. The 1020 even allows you to re-crop a zoomed-in shot after the fact, since it always keeps a copy of the full-resolution image.
How does it work? Brilliantly. It produces much more detailed zoomed-in snaps than a standard smartphone camera, and it works with video, too, allowing lossless, 4x zoom on 1080p footage, and 6x zoom on 720p. Again, no other standard smartphone offers this capability. However, we’d prefer it if the zoom worked smoothly – the in-video zoom is very jerky.
The second benefit is oversampling. At the same time as capturing the high-resolution image, the 1020 creates a second, 5-megapixel photo. Thanks to all the extra pixels in the bigger image, this allows the image-processing software to perform noise reduction in the final, lower-resolution image.
All this combines with a highly effective optical stabilisation system to produce a camera that in terms of all-round quality, tops every other smartphone camera on the market. In low light, it’s better even than the Galaxy S4 Zoom, although that phone’s 10x optical zoom beats the 1020 for far-off subjects, and it makes a superb 1080p video camera.
It isn’t without flaws. We found video autofocus occasionally refused to work until we’d switched to manual zoom and back again, a bug we hope will be corrected in an update. In stills mode, under fluorescent lighting, photos sometimes took on an unpleasant yellow-brown hue.
The Pro Camera app isn’t as quick as we’d like it to be either, and it’s also worth bearing in mind that you can’t upload the full-resolution images to social networks, only the 5-megapixel pictures.
The smartphone
Still, the positives outweigh the negatives, and it’s a pretty good smartphone, too, at least as far as Windows Phone 8 handsets go. You get the usual bundle of Nokia apps, including free global satnav with local maps, Nokia Music, the same Smart Cam software we first saw on the Lumia 925 and the Microsoft Office mobile apps.
Making phone calls was a pleasure, with crystal clear audio at both ends, and it makes a great speakerphone – the single speaker on the bottom edge goes very loud indeed.
The Nokia's 768 x 1,280 AMOLED display isn't as bright as its IPS-screened rivals, yet still produced an acceptable maximum brightness of 279cd/m2 in our tests. And as AMOLED technology conjures up inky blacks, the contrast levels are stunning, as is the palette of rich, saturated colours.
Browsing the web feels slick and smooth, as does the rest of the UI, and general performance isn’t bad at all. It recorded a speedy SunSpider score of 896ms – around the same as the 920. Gaming performance is a little less impressive, though, as proved by a result of 6.1fps in the GFXBench T-Rex HD test. As far as raw power goes, it’s a long way behind the latest from HTC, Samsung and Apple.
Battery life isn’t the best either, with 50% remaining on the gauge after our usual day-long test, which involves the simple task of downloading a 50MB podcast, playing audio through headphones for an hour, leaving the screen on for an hour, and conducting a 30-minute phonecall, then synchronising with a Gmail account for the rest of the day. Again, it’s a few steps behind the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4 in this regard – if you’re planning a long day of photography, the battery in the Lumia 1020’s optional camera grip makes it an essential accessory.
However, it’s all about the camera with the Nokia Lumia 1020, and on this front it’s a huge success. You can zoom without needing bulky optics, shoot successfully in low light, adjust settings manually and produce images of the highest quality. Combined with decent smartphone capabilities, it’s an alluring proposition. The 1020 is expensive, but it’s the most desirable Windows Phone 8 handset we’ve seen so far.
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