[Nokia Lumia 1020] slannmage:
What I don't understand is at the start of the year we had the big show down of the GS4 vs the HTC One. People were going spec crazy to even the fact that the GS4 must be better because it has DDR3 or the HTC One screen must be better because the PPI is 480 (my phone says 480) to the GS4s 441. We even had people complain that the GS4 was a pentile screen and it didn't look as sharp as the HTC One and that OLED fades over time and if you have a static image on for too long, you'll see burn in. I can confirm the screen burn with OLEDs, the phones I've had in the past with OLED screens always get it.

However suddenly when it comes to Nokia they seem to get away with selling you dated hardware. It's 720p, the PPI is 334 and it's a PENTILE OLED screen...... they even put this tinted black glass over the front to try and hide the future screen burn. Somehow Nokia get away with it and people don't care, where it comes to everyone else however, they'll get scrutinized and people will say it's **** straight away.

Not only that but you're getting a dated S4 dual core and an Adreno 225 which is 2/3 years old at this point. What Nokia are basically doing is selling you last years hardware at $300 on contract! I could accept the argument that Windows Phone doesn't need better hardware or whatever, though nor does Android. My Galaxy S2 never had any lag or weird issues at the time it was released, it was one of the fastest phones out there. It's easy to look back at it now and say it was a PoS, that's because the software has evolved to the point it's showing its age. My point is, I'm not going to buy a phone that is crazy expensive, to get dated hardware that is now so cheap that Nokia must be making a mint.

I keep seeing this argument of how Android is laggy and requires 1000 cores to run properly. It's just not the case, I have a HTC One and Android runs perfectly smooth, no stutter and nothing has pushed it in terms of gaming and the browser is mega fast. If I put the HTC One next to a Windows phone in a store and compare them, I'm not seeing Android lag at all. In fact what I do see is the browser on the HTC One is way faster and it boots up a hell of a lot faster and the animation on the scroll is smoother, where it looks like it is dropping frames on the Windows Phone.

Windows Phone is smooth on the whole yeah, however it's a myth to me that Android is a laggy pos that requires a super computer to run well. I look at my usage on my HTC One and what does it say? 2 cores in use, 2 cores on idle and it's clocked at 1.1ghrz. So in reality Android doesn't need 4 cores to run well, those cores are only used from moment to moment when the cpu requires it. The same with memory, my phone is using 768mb ram right now, it doesn't need 2gb of ram, though I'm guessing a chunk of that is for the GPU as well, when it comes to memory, more is always better as it allows games to use larger texture files and what not. So I just don't get why you'd spend more money for less, I don't find that acceptable, yeah if the price was cheaper then it would be fine but... it isn't.

Battery life as well for the 1020 is meant to be horrible if you actually use the thing you buy it for, the camera. It's only 2000MaH and you cannot replace it and from my experience with the 808, you really need to replace that battery if you're taking lots of shots. If an Android device got that poor battery life, people would be going crazy, yet it's another thing that because it's Nokia... let them get away with it. I get 1-2 days out of my HTC One, it's only like 300MaH more than the Nokia 1020 and the 920, it's proof again for me that Android doesn't drain battery life mad, it's how you use it. You have freedom on Android to use the device how you life, I'm sure if you have 6 pages of widgets and you have every app open from under the sun in the background, you will drain battery. I'm just glad I have the freedom to do that and with true multitasking, not just a saved state.

I have to come onto form factor as well, again if an Android phone was as big as a 920 or a 1020 then people would be going crazy, even if it was an iPhone. Every review says the 920 is giant and hard to fit into your pocket and every review says the 1020 is horrible to hold because they put the camera bump too low down. Why do they get a free pass from that? People hated how the HTC One rocked about on a flat surface but no one seems to care that the 1020 is even worse.

Windows Phone lacks apps, it's a restrictive OS where you have to wait for Microsoft to do everything for you. It's basically a worse IOS with a different look, both pride themselves on being smooth but where Windows Phone lacks functionality, people give it a free ride because it looks different. I see so much hate on IOS because of Apple and how it's a closed OS, yet the same people do not care it's the same for Windows Phone. If Microsoft made it open like the desktop, I'd be so happy, however I hate having to wait years for them to do something, when a custom rom would have already done it on Android. Yet in every argument, the good points of Android never come up, it's always these unfounded arguments of how poorly it runs. I just think do your research, if you're going to buy a PoS phone that runs Android, then that's your own fault, you can find those cheap good for nothing phones on any platform.

At the end of the day though the 920 had a mediocre over saturated camera where the images were far too soft. I remember a website doing a blind comparison and funnily enough the iPhone 5 was everyone's favourite because Apple just get the software so right. The 1020's focus is obviously the camera and technically it beats everything but the 808, which lets be honest isn't really a smart phone as it runs Symbian. I've owned an 808, I've compared pictures to the 1020 and the 808 looks much better, especially in full resolution mode. I had to sell the 808 because I couldn't stand being on Symbian any longer and a camera doesn't make a phone, I can buy a separate camera and I have. I have a go pro 3 for my Motorcycle and I have a DSLR for shooting pictures I actually care how they turn out... obviously a DSLR beats even the 808 and 1020.

Again though I think the 1020s camera is flawed, it doesn't have a dedicated image processor, so images take so long to save. At the same time I could have taken 20 images on the HTC One or GS4 and for every day use they look just as good when you upload them to facebook or whatever people do. I think people are trying to treat the 1020 as some professional camera and forgetting about the rest of the phone. If you want a professional camera, there are much better options and you don't get locked into a 2 year contract paying $300 upfront. I do not feel that it's a good quick point of shoot like most other smart phones out there, just simply because it does take a long time to save images. Obviously the image quality is better, I've had first hand experience, however the images are over saturated like mad, judging by the 920, Nokia will not fix this. The images are over sharpened, you can not go down to ISO 50 and there is no ND filter for direct sunlight shots. So I don't see any advanced in this camera over say the 808 or a dedicated camera, I cannot see why it's hyped so much. The end result is too much grain and noise in the picture, especially if you use Nokia's automatic settings which just increase the ISO even in the daylight to 200... no wonder why there is so much noise. Realistically I want to be putting it to 50... yet I can't?

I think there is far too much hype for the phone that doesn't really do anything really well, the OIS could have been much better and the mic performance is lacking. I'm not sure if it's their software controlling the mics or if it's crap hardware. However it sounds like it's only recording in mono or it's really muffled or something, maybe Windows Phone doesn't support stereo recording?

You get these crazy rabid Nokia fanbois now just going crazy if there is any criticism and it's really weird. You don't get this from Android because people aren't tied to an OEM, people generally just go for the best handset that is released at that moment in time.