Whether or not it's a gap that needs filling is a matter of debate: some say having such a large screen means easier typing, more comfortable web browsing and a more enjoyable gaming experience; others find such devices hip-jabbing, pocket-splitting comedy phones, too impractical for everyday use.
Whichever side you come down on, however, there's no doubting the Lumia's 1520 top-end credentials. It may be large, measuring 86mm wide, 193mm tall and weighing 209g, but its slim profile and elegant lines make the most of the situation.
In common with much of the Nokia Lumia range, this is a beautifully made piece of hardware: its brightly coloured, matte-plastic finish feels silky in the hand; there's scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 2 on the front; and the whole unit feels built to last. There's even a modicum of practicality: the Lumia 1520 sports a microSDXC card slot, which allows you to boost the storage from 32GB to a maximum of 96GB. There's support for 4G and wireless charging, as well as NFC for quick Bluetooth pairing. However, there's no way to replace the internal battery.
All-round performance and specifications are just as good. Under the hood is the popular quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 CPU, clocked at 2.2GHz and backed up by 2GB of RAM. This is enough to attain top results in all the mobile benchmarks we ran on the handset: it recorded an average time of 537ms in SunSpider, and 25fps in the graphics-heavy GFXBench 2.7 T-Rex HD.
Windows Phone 8 runs flawlessly on this phone, top games play smoothly, and the screen size means you can truly immerse yourself in the action. The 6in display also means you can squeeze more into the Windows Phone homescreen: whereas the 4.5in Nokia Lumia 1020 can show two columns of the larger, square tiles, the Lumia 1520 can display three (or six of the smaller icons). We rather like the way this looks: there's plenty of information on show, yet the grid layout keeps it neat.
The quality of the huge display is excellent. Colours pop off the screen at default settings, but it's possible to adjust the overall colour temperature and saturation if you crave a more sedate or vivid palette. Although the maximum brightness isn't up with the best we've tested – we measured it at only 366cd/m2 – Nokia's ClearBlack polarising filter technology does a great job of keeping the screen readable in the brightest of conditions. Outdoors, it's just as readable as the iPhone 5s.
The Lumia 1520's camera, which is a 20-megapixel PureView unit, is also pretty good; it works in a similar way to the 40-megapixel snapper on the Lumia 1020. It captures a low-resolution, 5-megapixel shot and a full-resolution photo at the same time, offering the opportunity to re-crop images after shooting and making it easier to upload to social networking sites. There's also optical stabilisation, which smooths out handshake in video and allows for sharper shots at slower shutter speeds.
As with the Lumia 1020, the high-resolution sensor delivers lossless 3x video zoom; there's a dual-LED flash for in-the-pub snaps; and Nokia's Pro Cam software gives advanced access to ISO, shutter speed, white balance and exposure compensation. It's also possible to shoot raw images. The Lumia 1520 also sports four microphones, in theory boosting audio-capture quality.
These are impressive specs, and the camera is at least as good as the Lumia 1520's main rival, the Samsung Galaxy Note 3. If anything, low-light shots are slightly sharper, and the overall balance of photographs and video is excellent. The audio, captured by the quad-microphone array, is superb – full of body and depth.
However, if you were expecting anything approaching the quality of the Lumia 1020, you're going to be disappointed. The Lumia 1520's smaller, 1/2.5in sensor means low-light photos look much murkier and more smeary in comparison. There's also a distracting amount of optical distortion, although this is only obvious when shooting subjects with horizontal lines that run across the width of the frame.
Finally, battery life is excellent. The larger chassis gives Nokia the opportunity to jam in a bigger battery, and the Lumia 1520's 3,400mAh unit delivers stamina to rival the Galaxy Note 3. In our 24-hour test, in which we carry out a set of repeatable tests – a 50MB data download, a 30-minute phone call, an hour of screen-on time and an hour of audio playback – it retained a superb 70% on the gauge, matching the Samsung.
All in all, the Nokia Lumia 1520 is an excellent smartphone. It's the most powerful and rounded Windows Phone handset we've seen to date, it retains Nokia's refined sense of design, and includes the usual combination of Nokia and Microsoft Office apps - which is always a bonus. It combines all this with a little extra practicality, a stunning screen, good battery life and a camera that, despite some issues, is highly accomplished.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 remains our favourite large-screen smartphone – its smaller size and stylus make it a more practical, usable choice, and Android still delivers a wider choice of apps than Windows Phone – but this Lumia runs it a close second.
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