Nokia had a labouring 2013 gunning for every segment of the smartphone grocery store. The now Microsoft-owned company took the dispirited-closing commercialise by storm with the popular Lumia 520, while the Lumia 720 and Lumia 625 occupy the mid-range, and the Lumia 925 keeps the high-end under control. Let's not forget the Lumia 1020 either, whose monstrous 41-megapixel camera makes information technology the perfect smartphone for photography lovers.

Nokia Lumia 1520 - $699 (unlocked)

  • 6.0", 1920x1080 IPS LCD (368 ppi)
  • Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC
  • 2.3 GHz quad-sum CPU, Adreno 330 GPU, 2GB RAM
  • 32 Gilbert internal storage, microSD card slot
  • 20 Military policeman camera, 1/2.5" sensing element, f/2.4 lens, 1080p30 video
  • 3,400 mAh, 12.9 Wh barrage
  • LTE, WI-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC
  • Windows Phone 8 Update 3
  • 209 grams, 8.7mm gelatinlike

And yet in that respect was another slice of the market that Nokia hadn't touched, until now. Throughout the sometime class we've seen companies try and nose the queen-size-screen crown away from Samsung's Galaxy Musical note line, only the likes of the Sony Xperia Z Ultra and HTC One Soap have failed to make a serious impingement. Nokia is hoping that their Lumia 1520 will give the Take note 3 a run for its money, especially with its impressive spec bed sheet.

The Lumia 1520 is the first Windows Phone to come with a Snapdragon 800 SoC, the archetypal with a quadruplet-core CPU, the first with a 1080p display, and the first to really vie on a hardware level with top Android devices of the similar generation. It also sees Nokia's vast imaging expertise put to good apply in one case again, with the inclusion of a 20-megapixel PureView shooter sure to please enthusiasts out there.

Chucking in totally this top-end hardware isn't a fiddle-shaped key to success, though, as it has to be complemented by a well-integrated software suite. Will this flagship Windows Earphone be able-bodied to deliver?

The Nokia Lumia 1520 used therein look back was provided by Expansys. Check them unfashionable for unlocked, off-contract devices at great prices, with fast merchant vessels around the globe.

Intent

Packing a six-inch presentation into a smartphone is never going to make it miniscule, and then the challenge for any designer is keeping it portable. The Galax Observe 3 is large merely it never feels repressing, whereas the Xperia Z Immoderate and its 6.4-inch display felt cumbersome and affected usableness. The Lumia 1520 fits somewhere in between: it'll take enormous pants pockets to accommodate the device's footprint, but the display always feels manageable.

The largeness factor is soothed past good ergonomic choices that don't affect the French telephone's looks. The edges of the 1520 are curved to the letter, and the display's Gorilla Glass protection also glides inaccurate to either face, making it signally easy to manipulate content on-screen out. Scorn the 1520's curves, IT still looks like a device that's made for today's market, featuring a squarish body that complements Windows Phone 8 and reasonably decreased bezels.

Speaking of bezels, the six-in reveal is buffered away 5mm to either side and 19mm to the best and bottom. The display occupies around 71% of the front panel, which is reasonable but non quite As bezel-slim as the Eminence 3, which sees 75% display coverage. Nokia claims the device is 8.7mm thick, simply my measurements target it closer to 9.3mm thick, rising to 10.8mm at the camera hump; regardless of Nokia's measurement error, the Lumia 1520 feels slender in your hands.

Once again Nokia has chosen soft-touch polycarbonate for the majority of the Lumia 1520's construction, giving IT a identical connatural feel to the mid-wander Lumia 720. While the polycarbonate material used is technically plastic, IT shows that Nokia knows its ironware as the phone retains a high-class, high-choice feel to information technology. The 1520's back panel is within reason smooth, but it feels great, avoiding the same issues we've relate see over and over from Samsung's cheap plastic agitate.

The polycarbonate unibody is available in quartet colours: you can experience a standard black or white, Beaver State for the adventurous at that place's also red and white-livered. As you lav tell from our survey photos, we got the yellow model and it's quite striking. Deep infused into the plastic, the vividness is superiority and will surely turn heads whenever you pull along out the gimmick from your pockets, especially considering the sized of the phone itself.

Around the device you'll happen the 3.5mm sound jack in the middle of the teetotum border, the microUSB port in the middle of the bottom edge, and the usual configuration of buttons on the right side. The loudness rocker sits at the top, followed away the world power push, which is placed in a remarkably well-off situatio considering the size of the Lumia 1520. Further down you'll find the cardinal-stage camera release, a staple inclusion on all Windows Phones that assists captures taken with the 20-megapixel rear shooter.

On the top left-pass abut you'll find both the microSD notice slot and SIM card slot neatly tucked into the unibody. With a press of the SIM removal tool, either one of the trays can be removed entirely, assisting in the subprogram of placing the necessary cards inside the device. Interestingly Nokia has gone for a little unrefined nano-SIM in the 1520, which could average you'll have to change all over your SIM if you're coming from any phone former than an iPhone.

I'm glad to see the resurgence of the microSD card slot in Nokia's smartphones, because at one point the company crowned the internal store at 16 Great Britain, removed the microSD option and idea that would be acceptable.

Apart from the massive show, the front panel is a typical Nokia affair: tasteful and functional. The buttons at the bottom of the screen are quite a furthermost down the handset's profile and the back button can comprise hard to hit, but it's something that is edge to become more natural after a few weeks of use. In a higher place the reveal you'll find the call verbaliser, a front-facing camera and a few hidden sensors.

The back is very understated (take out for the cowardly, naturally). In that respect's a reasonable hump to accommodate the large camera sensor, plus a plural-LED flash, few bits of branding and a speaker grille at the bottom. The body exhibits a small amount of flex when you attempt to bend IT, just it's nothing to comprise to a fault concerned about.

Display

The Nokia Lumia 1520 brings us the first Windows Phone with a truly high-resolution display. Ironware wise we'Ra seeing a 6-inch IPS TFT LCD panel with a resoluteness of 1920 x 1080, coming with a pixel density of 367 PPI and terminated 99.2 square centimeters of real estate. Microsoft had to order in some work to pay back the resolution supported in Windows Phone 8 GDR3, but the work has sure as shooting paid off.

The Lumia 1520's video display is large and fine-looking, easily whipping Nokia's smartphones of the past, such as the Lumia 925 and Lumia 1020, which utilized 1280 x 768 AMOLED panels. The display exhibits great color reproduction, balanced across the range yet with sufficient vibrancy to make any image look fantastic. In the settings menu you can adjust the color profile of the display to your liking, but I tend to find the default settings put up a great balance between chroma and lifelikeness.

Contrast from the IPS display is enceinte American Samoa far American Samoa LCDs are concerned, but not as strong As AMOLEDS imputable some of the backlight passing through. Look standard display test patterns reveals the Lumia 1520's panel can display all but three of the deepest illegal levels, and all of the white levels. There's slight banding when looking at at gradients, signification IT waterfall behind the displays that LG uses in the G2 and Link 5, simply information technology's nevertheless squeaky quality.

The display's 1080p resolution is also a first in terms of aspect ratio, with all other Lumias until this point using 15:9 panels rather than 16:9. The facial expression ratio is of little consequence, but the resolution is not, making everything from text to videos look simply superb. Where edges look competitively indistinct on the Lumia 1020's PenTile AMOLED, they expect sharp and defined on the Lumia 1520's.

This form of hardware anti-aliasing is most pronounced when viewing textual matter, as fonts can scram diluent and littler without losing the power to actually show them. 367 PPI International Relations and Security Network't American Samoa dense as you'll get from a 4.7-inch or 5.0-inch 1080p expose that can go as shrilling as 400 PPI, just you'll likely view the 1520's large display from further departed, bounteous it the same paper-like quality of smaller handsets.

Nokia has mainstreamed ClearBlack applied science into the 1520's six-inch display, which is essentially a series of polarizing filters built into the panel that reject ambient light, making it easier to see the display when outdoors. Occluded with sunlight legibility enhancements on the package side, the 1520's LCD panel is one of the easiest to see outdoors, keeping just as bright and easy to see in direct sunlight as indoors. It's also great to see that, despite the inclusion of polarizing filters, the display is readable while wearing polarizing sunglasses, albeit with a slight color shift depending on how you'Re viewing the video display.

Strong viewing angles keep this particular IPS LCD legible at nearly completely off-angles, including extremely acute ones, in a similar fashion to HTC's Comprehensive Liquid crystal display 3 display used on the HTC One. Slight discolor shift occurs when viewing the display round 45 degrees, but it's scarcely anything to comprise concerned more or less; it's still very easy to read the display when it's sitting on the desk, for example.

Unfortunately, the Lumia 1520 doesn't lineament integrated style supporting like the Beetleweed Note 3, which is something I'll explore in deeper point in the software segment (next page). It does however supporting high-sensitivity touch, so you can use the handset while wearing gloves. With drunk-sensitivity touch enabled it is possible to use a pencil OR metal objective American Samoa a 'stylus', but it's overly hit and overlea for Maine to recommend this Eastern Samoa a serious stylus-enabled phone.

The 1520's display is easily the best I've seen on a Windows Phone and one of the all but beautiful out of all the smartphones on the market beating some the Galaxy Note 3 and Xperia Z Ultra in overall quality aside some margin.