Nokia Lumia 1520 Hands-On: No Compromise

Nokia Lumia 1520 Hands-On: No Compromise

The phablet world just saw two new monsters roar into town — Nokia’s mammoth 6-inch, 1080p resolution-screened phone, the Gorilla Glass 2-displayed 1520, and a lower-specced 1320. We’ve been lucky enough to get our hands on ’em.

While I’m really partial to Nokia’s Lumia design, the fact that they chose glossy polycarbonate for a 6-inch device is mind-boggling. You want more grip with larger devices, so it would’ve been great to see the matt finish on these two phones. Plus, I can’t help but feel cheated by glossy plastic phones — like Samsung’s Galaxy range, the 1320 and 1520 appear almost cheap because of it.

Nonetheless, the devices are light (209 grams for the 1520), which is more than can be said about the recent HTC One Max, which weighs in at 217 grams. While there’s not much between the two, the Lumia 1520 just feels lighter — perhaps it’s that cool plastic playing tricks on our mind.

The 1520, which we focussed most of our attention on, runs on the latest build of Windows Phone 8, GDR3. The only noticeable lag felt was when I opened up the new Nokia Storyteller app, but it wasn’t before long that the images popped up and I was able to view the geo-tagged photos and video pre-loaded on the test device.

The one blip on the horizon for the 1520 and 1320 are the cases, which felt really flimsy and almost like third-party accessories. While the yellow case looked striking against the red Lumia, the overall effect was akin to holding the Lumia in a cheap yellow Snappy Snaps carrier bag — needless to say, I wasn’t a fan of that one.

I’m really sold on Nokia’s Lumia design, which has remained consistent since the introduction of the first Lumias, the 710 and 800, at the tail-end of 2011. With the Lumia 1520, that design hasn’t been compromised. [Gizmodo UK]


Gizmodo UK is gobbling up the news in a different timezone, so check them out if you need another Giz fix. [clear]


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