Nokia Lumia 1520 review: Big on form and function

Nokia was known to be one of the biggest phone makers in the world. But that changed with the smartphone era. The tech company dominated the phone market two decades ago, and ever since, its popularity has significantly reduced in the iPhone and Android age. Today, Nokia, with its adoption of the Windows Phone platform, is gaining traction in the phone wars. Many people have argued that Nokia has been having a hard time in catching up in innovation. But that has to change with its latest entry to the smartphone market in the form of the Nokia Lumia 1520 – a smartphone that’s not just big in size, but also big in design, quality, and features. This is the review of the Lumia 1520. It’s one of the big-screen smartphones today that deserves recognition for its uniqueness.

Design and Hardware

The Nokia Lumia 1520 has a great design and build quality. Photo: Microsoft

The Lumia 1520 has one of the best designs in the smartphone industry to date. Although some would argue about its plastic, polycarbonate casing, this phone screams quality in its build. It is solidly built and enough to withstand the ruggedness of everyday life. Hats off to Nokia for designing such a solid phone. It feels good in the hand with its polycarbonate shell that, subsequently, makes it cool in the feel during use even with powerful internal components. With computer-aided machining techniques used in the manufacture of this phone, the details really matter in every millimeter of it. The speaker ports are precisely drilled. Even the ports for the headphone jack and the USB connector weren’t left out of design considerations. The high attention to detail tells how beautiful this phone is.

The Nokia Lumia 1520 has a great-looking 6-inch HD display. Photo: Microsoft

To complement the polycarbonate body of the Lumia 1520 is its large 6-inch full HD display, which has a resolution of 1920-by-1080 pixels at 370 pixels per inch. The display is really good with very wide viewing angles, accurate color reproduction, sharp text, and high contrast thanks to its in-plane switching (IPS) display technology. You won’t have any trouble viewing your content on a bright, sunny day. It is the first Windows Phone to sport a full 1080P display. With this display, the homescreen have got a larger canvas to display more information at once. In fact, the tiles have increased on this particular display compared to the existing Windows Phones around.

Features

Performance is top-notch on this big Windows Phone. Currently, it is the most powerful Windows Phone ever released. It is powered by a 2.2-GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, Adreno 330 graphics processor, and 2 GB of RAM. These specs are looking good on paper, and delivers in real life performance as it should. The overall user interface performance is zippy, fluid, and responsive – most specially due to the excellent hardware optimization of the Windows Phone UI.

The camera on the Nokia Lumia 1520 shoots amazing photos with great detail. Photo: Microsoft

The Lumia 1520 sports a 20-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and dual LED flash. It takes excellent photos with high contrast and great color range, and captures full 1080P HD video that’s improved with true optical image stabilization. The Nokia Pro Cam app is the default camera app for the Lumia 1520. It’s not a stock app from Windows Phone. It is a specially-made app to take advantage of the high-performance camera optics of this smartphone. True to the app’s name are the quality of the images produced: photos are of pro quality. You can be very assured that this camera rivals most conventional point-and-shoot cameras. You can finally ditch your normal point-and-shoot and get even greater quality photos with the Lumia 1520.

Battery life is great on the Lumia 1520. It has a huge 3,400-mAh battery that can last up to 2-3 days of usage on a full charge, depending on your usage. The Lumia 1520 is also a world phone with great connectivity thanks to its LTE, HSPA, and 3G support for a wide range of network bands.

Verdict

The Nokia Lumia 1520 is the best Windows Phone yet. With great hardware, great features, and great performance, everything you get on this phone is big. Literally. The display is incredibly good, and the battery will be able to ride along with your active lifestyle. If you decide on getting a Windows Phone today, this should be on top of your list. Existing iPhone and Android users will be easily familiar with the Windows Phone interface, and the fluidity and responsiveness of the interface rivals those of iOS and Android ecosystems. It is true enough to say that the Nokia Lumia 1520 is literally big on form and function.