




Lumia 1020Nokia Lumia 1020

Here's a quick recap of the phone's specs:

    Nokia PureView sensor Lumia 1020
  • Mechanical shutter
  • Xenon flash
  • 1 GB DRAM
  • 32 GB internal NAND flash storage

Source: EVLeaks on Twitter

Comments     Threshold


nice but nothing more
By UpSpin on 7/4/2013 4:33:35 PM , Rating: 1
1. Finally they add a Xenon flash back to smartphones. It's about time.
The camera will also be the best possible in a smartphone for one or two years. The sensor size is impressive, so the possibilities with such a high pixel count. No question: It's impressive and probably the reference for every future smartphone.
2. But the remaining specs are poor and ridiculous. A dual core in times of Quad and Octa-Cores, a 720p display in times of 1080p displays, only 1GB RAM on a smartphone which can shoot >30MP images. Before people try to defend Nokias stupid decisions: It's a flagship smartphone, it will most probably be priced simila to a Galaxy S4 or HTC One and yes, we all know that WP8 runs fine on a dual core with 1GB RAM, just as Windows 8 runs fine on a dual core with 1GB of RAM, but the programs (games, photoshop, intensive browser sessions) on top of it don't! The more power available the more freedom for app developers. And this smartphone seems to have hardware from two years ago, so also only expect apps similar to those on Android and iOS two years ago.

If the remaining specs are also up-to-date, then it might be really competive, no it's just a mediocre smartphone with an impressive camera.

RE: nice but nothing more
By BZDTemp on 7/4/2013 5:18:40 PM , Rating: 2
Exactly what programs is it that isn't running well on the hardware you say is from two years ago? Have you even tried how stuff works on one of those phones with "poor and ridiculous" specs?

To me it seems pretty silly to judge in the way you are as it seems based on speculation and nothing else.

I for one am pretty sure Nokia know what they are doing.

RE: nice but nothing more
By UpSpin on 7/5/2013 3:47:40 PM , Rating: 1
1. games: the faster the SoC and the more RAM available, the better the games.
2. this thing shoots >30MP which needs lots of processing power especially for live- and post-processing. You pobably want to edit and manipulate them on the smartphone, create slide shows, ... do stuff you can with HTC Zoe, and so on. The larger the image, the more RAM and the more processing power you need. Maybe apps will capture live views Of course it's possible with a dual core and 1GB, but it would be magnitudes better with 2GB and a quad core.
3. You can easily fill the ram with heavy browsing sessions and other apps in the backgrund running.
4. Those aren't speculations, because it affects every operating system. It's a physical fact: The more ram and the faster the SoC, the faster and more versatile the smartphone becomes and the possibilities with it.
To me it seems pretty silly to justify two years old specs on a flag-ship smartphone.
With such poor specs it can't get compared to the HTC One or Galaxy S4 but more to the Galaxy S4 zoom, which might be the better choice thanks to the optical zoom. However, both will be niche devices, nothing which helps Nokia and WP8 to gain significant market share.

I'm an Android user. I really would like a smartphone with this camera, but even with Android on it, I wouldn't buy it, because of the disappointing remaining specs. So my criticism has nothing to do with WP8, but only with Nokia.

RE: nice but nothing more
By OoklaTheMok on 7/6/2013 1:53:15 PM , Rating: 5
How can you tell someone is an Android user? They'll tell you... :)

Please keep in mind that Windows Phone is a more advanced OS than Android. It simply runs better on fewer resources, and makes more resources available for the foreground application by better management of background applications.

Lastly, throwing more cores should be the last resort to elevate performance because of the ramifications that come with it, such as more power consumption and providing more headroom for sloppily written apps to perform better only on high performance devices, versus the mid-grade devices.

RE: nice but nothing more
By mattraimy on 7/13/2013 7:14:59 PM , Rating: 2
Here you'll find a fully & completely in-depth review of Nokia Lumia 1020 @

It's more than a 41 mp camera! just look @ this website to know about this amazing smartphone! Forget about big & heavy cameras on vacations!

RE: nice but nothing more
By nikon133 on 7/4/2013 5:32:24 PM , Rating: 3
Not quite.

Putting top hardware (1080p, 4 or 8c SoC...) together with this sort of camera would drive device's price well above competition, and lock it into niche segment. With bulgy 20+ MP camera at the back, it already is niche, but pushing hardware envelope further and ending up with price significantly above competing phones would make it uberniche, something that many admires but nobody buys.

That being said. My RX100 camera has effectively VGA resolution on 3" screen. Mind you, it looks absolutely great, so I'm pretty sure 720p screen will serve camera with ~5" screen just fine.

Device must have dedicated image processing engine (which adds to the price), so it does make sense keeping phone SoC price down. Dual core has proven to work well with WP8. I don't even think that there is much software for WP, including games, that would really take advantage of 4C or 8C.

I won't be surprise if in near future Nokia releases high-end phone with more standard 8-12MP camera, 1080p screen, more powerful SoC and slim - and in line with competition price wise, but I don't think this will be THAT phone.

RE: nice but nothing more
By UpSpin on 7/5/13, Rating: 0
RE: nice but nothing more
By thesavvymage on 7/4/13, Rating: 0
RE: nice but nothing more
By datdamonfoo on 7/5/2013 8:06:31 AM , Rating: 2
This is wrong. Windows Phone 8 supports up to 64 cores.

RE: nice but nothing more
By Wererat on 7/5/2013 10:24:53 AM , Rating: 2
The other wrong part; WP does support 1920x1080 rez (try searching DT itself or any number of other sites for news on Visual Studio updates for 1080p Windows phones)

RE: nice but nothing more
By BaronMatrix on 7/5/2013 4:04:11 PM , Rating: 3
I have a 1280x720 HTC 8X and it's just right for Landscape on web sites... 1080p may make the text too small at 4.3"...

And I can't really see intense gaming on my phone...

RE: nice but nothing more
By UpSpin on 7/6/2013 3:26:54 AM , Rating: 2
1080p doesn't make the text any smaller, the text gets scaled! It gets sharper. The same with images.

Does the text on the Google Chromebook look smaller than on other devices? No.
Does the text on the Macbook Pro with Retina display look smaller than on older Macbooks? No.
Do modern games played at 1080p have smaller characters and textures than the game played at 720p? No. The edges get smoother, the quality better. The size remains unchanged, because it scales.
(yes, Windows and most programs running on top of it doesn't support it, but WP8 should, just as iOS, Android, Mac OS does)

See the section Density independence:

You don't only need a fast GPU for games, for example Maps with a 3D view also require a high end GPU.

RE: nice but nothing more
By p05esto on 7/6/2013 10:06:40 PM , Rating: 2
The specs mean NOTHING. Windows Phone is very lean and mean. I can have my huge screen Lumina 928 on all day almost and still have battery left. Granted it depends on what I'm doing. The OS is smooth and everything runs fast.

You can't compare bloatware Android to Windows Phone. You need half the hardware for Windows. Try it, you'll see. WP8 is very nice (Win8 on desktop, not at all!)

