Nokia Lumia 1020 – first view

The first time I saw the Nokia Lumia 1020 was during its maiden product launch in Hong Kong. I must admit I was drawn by the rather inspiring video showing the work that went into the camera. Sure it was a shameless work of marketing but from a real mechanical shutter covering the 41MP sensor to the optical image stabilization (OIS) mechanics, this is – in my view – a class all its own.

I’ve read comments complaining about the 1020’s hump housing the 41MP camera and flash. Seriously, has anyone ever looked at the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom? Compared to the 1020’s ‘hump’, the S4 Zoom is like a camel’s back!

This is a short review as I plan to follow it up with a review of the various software add-ons that Nokia introduced alongside the new hardware.

Display: The Lumia 1020 comes with a 4.5-inch 1280 x 720 touchscreen display. Like its 920 and 926 siblings, the Lumia 1020 comes with a Clear Bright screen that you can easily see in outside bright conditions. Apple, LG, Samsung and Sony should figure out how they can deliver the same experience with their smartphones as Nokia’s smartphones including the 1020.

Audio: The 1020 has two microphones (top and bottom). The top mic, which sits next to the SIM card tray and the 3.5mm headset jack is for noise cancellation.

Buttons: The right side of the 1020 has a volume rocker, power and standby button and a dedicated camera button (other smartphones allow you to program one of the buttons to become a camera button but they have no dedicated camera button out of the box).

Weight: Despite the added components for OIS and the 41MP sensor, the 1020 is actually lighter (158g) than its sibling the 920 – its slimmer (130.4mm x 71.4mm x 10.4mm) too.

Connectivity: The 1020 comes with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, NFC and LTE.

Other internals: With the release of the 64-bit A7 processor on the iPhone 5S, you’d wonder why Nokia would handicap the 1020 with a measly Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core 1.5GHz processor. The reality is that combined with a decent 2GB RAM, the 1020 is actually fast. The Windows Phone 8 OS hasn’t slowed down the 1020 either. In fact, it’s still a relatively fast camera/phone.

Operating System: The 1020 ships with Windows Phone 8 called Amber which includes some new features like double tap the display to turn it on, or flip your phone over to silence it. Live tiles work as expected.

Apps: Nokia’s choice of Windows Phone as its operating system means it is handicap by the perception that it doesn’t have a sufficient number of apps on it. That could be a handicap if you are want to run all 875,721 apps currently available on Android or the 900,000 apps for IOS. But the truth of the matter is that the average user will only use about 30 apps over the lifetime of the device. I haven’t been able to find a listing of how many solitaire apps are on either platforms.

A real problem to date with the apps though is the lack of a centralized notification system. What happens is you have to scroll down just to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

I have a Samsung S3 and have 20 apps on it – a smorgasborg of tools and a smattering of games. But recently I observed that my phone has started to significantly slow down and while no one – neither the folks responsible for Android or the tech support people at Samsung – can give me an adequate explanation for what is happening, I have surmised that its partly due to incompatibilities between some of the apps and the OS itself. Sure, we get free upgrades on a regular basis but you start to worry at some point whether all your apps are optimized to both the hardware and the OS. Chances are – they are not!

The 1020 comes with a Xenon flash giving you a white balance closer to daylight compared to the blue hue you get when using the LED flash on most smartphones. The Xenon flash comes in handy when you are shooting photos at an event – range is good. The result is better than most phone, and some digicam, flashes out in the market today, including the high-end offerings out in the market today.

Camera: Make no mistake Nokia is very much focused on the digital imaging experience. The Nokia Pro Cam software is intuitive and comes with controls like manual focus and exposure you can find in prosumer cameras. Of course, you can always rely on the everything auto setting – it works too!

A unique feature of the 1020 is its default setting of creating two files for every shot you make – a 5MP oversampled photo and a 34MP (16:9) or 38MP (4:3) photo. The 5MP is for use on Twitter, Facebook or sharing via e-mail. The 34MP and 38MP is for downloading into a computer for editing or printing.

Do you really need a 34MP shot? I saw a demo where you are zoom to any part of a 34MP shot and get a consistent detail on virtually any part of the image – it’s like magic, and its freaky scary.

Limitations: The 1020 comes with a maximum of 32MB storage and no option for external storage – so you wonder how many 5MP and 34MP/38MP shots you can store on the 1020 before you have to start connected the device to your laptop or SkyDrive to offload photos. It also has a 2000 mAh battery and no option to swap batteries so you will have to buy one of those external, portable battery packs to charge your 1020 on the move. There are two options available. In Hong Kong, Nokia is offering an external case that comes with a built-in battery – the Camera Grip or by making some adjustments. There are two options available.

Continuous photo shooting for extended periods is also a problem. I’ve observed erratic performance when it comes to shooting photos in rapid succession. The camera takes a second to focus and shoot – sometimes it works a little faster, sometimes it doesn’t. So action photos and instances that require you to get a shot at just the right moment may not happen with the 1020.

WHAT I LIKE

The 1020 is a camera first and a phone second. It is, for me, the answer to having both a camera and a phone day-in, day-out. It won’t replace my Canon G1X or my old Nikon D70 but I don’t have to carry anything extra with me every day. The 1020’s 5MP photos are simply better than my Samsung S3 or my wife’s iPhone 5. Lossless zoom is a nice freebie courtesy of the 34MP/38MP with the zoomed-in photo is a blessing. The 1020’s battery is not bad.

WHAT I DON’T LIKE

I love the Live Tiles but the lack of notification is a something I’d like to have.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The Nokia Lumia 1020 is a solid smartphone to own – and can hold its own against even the more technically souped up spec of the likes of Samsung S4, iPhone 5S or Nexus 5. There is a small learning curve to get off Android or IOS and ride the Windows Phone 8 bandwagon but I don’t think I know 70% of what my S3 running Android 4.2 today. So I can’t rightly complain about Windows Phone 8.

I think that the most popular apps will eventually come into the Windows Phone 8 platform – it’s just a matter of time. Microsoft does need to work to attract developers to help. For its part, Nokia has been working to deliver value to the Lumia series on its own.

I will stop here with this review and leave the review of the more exotic photoshooting experience for another session.

PHOTOS

 

HTC HD7 – Seven is a charm

I’ve been clamoring for a chance to test drive a Windows mobile 7 phone for several months now. Much of this interest comes on the heels of reasonably good reviews of the product even from those I feel are traditionally Microsoft Windows haters.

So it was with gusto that I accepted the offer by HTC’s PR agency in Hong Kong to review the recently released HTC HD7 mobile phone. The review units tend to arrive on my desk with very little ceremony and packaging. The HD7 came cocooned in bubblewrap and nothing else. No manual, no cable, no nothing. So I pulled out the micro-USB charger of my BlackBerry 9800 and started to charge the HD7. I left it charging for overnight just to be safe. I also discovered that the last reviewer didn’t bother to erase his data so I proceeded to look for the RESET option with the full intention of wiping out the phone’s data before I proceed with the review. Needless to say, this is where the trouble started.

This is NOT an iPhone. One of the qualities that make for an excellent beginner’s experience on the iPhone is that you don’t need a manual to get started. This, alas, is lost with most other smart phone manufacturers. In most cases, whether its a Sony Ericsson Xperia or an HTC or a Samsung Galaxy, you need to read the manual to use the phone for purposes other than making phone calls. What’s worst, its becoming a fad now not to print the manual to appear to be “green”. Most users will not quibble about this when buying the phone at the local retail store but soon after they switch on the device, owners will start to wonder how to (1) set up the phone; and (2) move data from the previous phone to the current phone. OOPS! No manual. What do I do now?

In my case I had to Google it to find the user manual. The manual says out of the box, you get a phone, battery, USB cable, 3.5mm stereo headset, power adapter, start here guide, quick guide, and safety and regulations guide.

OBSERVATIONS
The HTC HD7 phone follows the current cream of smartphones in terms of physical attributes: large, reflective screen; minimalist physical buttons (in this case, one for power, a rocker for volume and a camera shutter); three soft buttons near the button front of the panel; a micro-USB port and a 3.5mm stereo headset port. The back of the phone hides the battery and SIM slot. A 5 megapixel camera is flanked by two LED flash and a tiny speaker. There is also a kickstand that props the phone in landscape mode when all you want to do is watch a video.

A year ago, I’d argue that setting up accounts on a mobile phone was a pain. My view of this changed with the Android phones and now with the Windows 7 mobile phone. I set up my gmail, hotmail, yahoo and Facebook accounts with ease.

WHAT I LIKE
I’ve never been fond of the voice command function of phones because most require that you train the phone and half the time the software isn’t accurate. The HD7 changed my view of this. To use the voice command to make a call, you press and hold the START button and then say “Call” name. In the five times I tried it, it was flawless.

The primary purpose of a phone is to make calls. My earlier experience with NOKIA and Motorola is that finding names can be troublesome if you have more than a few hundred contacts in your database. In my case, its closer to 3,000. On the HD7, this can get complicated once you’ve created your multiple contact accounts as the software will automatically pull the contacts from your different accounts. Imagine if you have a name listed in five accounts. That person can appear five times in your People list. The good news is that on the HD7, you can link multiple contacts together.

I like the use of Tiles on the home page to make navigation to different applications very easy. Some of the best apps I’ve taken to really like, and wish other vendors would shameless copy, is the People hub. People was built to make social networking and micro-blogging a seamless and enjoyable experience.

WHAT I DON’T LIKE
The first time I was handed the phone, I immediately didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t get it to work. My years of intuition wasn’t sufficient (I wasn’t intelligent enough) to get the phone to work. I was puzzled why the phone didn’t have a micro SD card slot (It turns out the phone came with 16GB of built-in storage). So after a few days of playing around with the phone, I’ve finally nailed down what it was I didn’t like most about the HD7 – the battery life.

The other less annoying is the power button. HTC has this button flushed so close to the chassis I often find it hard to press when I need to.

It can be argued that part of the iPhone’s apple is the 300,000+ apps designed to specifically for the phone. This is what every major phone manufacturer from Sony Ericsson, to RIM, to NOKIA, to Samsung, to Google, and now Microsoft is trying to emulate. As of writing, the Windows Marketplace for Mobile has about 5,100 apps on it although most have a price tags ranging from US$8 and up. The most expensive one I’ve seen so far is from MerchantPlus costing US$120.

By far, proponents of the iPod Touch, iPhone 4 and iPad will say that Microsoft is still ways behind in creating a more acceptable user interface when browsing the Internet. Yes, on the HD7 Web browsing is a bit slower. Not sure if this is a caching or rendering issue. But at the same time, this is far more pleasurable than surfing even on the BlackBerry Torch (hands down).

ONE MORE THING
Windows Mobile 7 clearly shows that Microsoft has been studying the Apple iPhone strategy. I understand that Microsoft is forcing phone manufacturers to customize as little of the operating system’s user interface – a strategy that mimics Apple’s approach of closely integrating the hardware with the operating system (OS). Earlier versions of the Microsoft Windows mobile approach was to let mobile phone makers freely customize the user experience, making base OS upgrades difficult.

One of the things I like about my BlackBerry is that I can copy over photos, videos, music and files to the device simply by dragging the dropping the aforementioned files using Windows Explorer. With the HD7, and I was told all Windows Mobile 7 phones, the only option is via Zune, Microsoft’s implementation of iTunes. While it is annoying that you need Zune to move files in and out of the phone, the one thing Microsoft has done well was make the Zune experience more intuitive and enjoyable – try it. This is a big improvement over iTunes’ very staid and uninviting user experience. I’m guessing you will like it… eventually.

I will regret returning this phone to the PR agency but as with all good things, everything has an end. I am sure the next iteration of Windows Mobile 7 will be even better. And you can ‘almost’ safely say that with WM7, Microsoft has ‘almost’ finally come to understand what mobility is all about. Watch our Apple and Google, Microsoft is back in the game.

As for the HTC HD7 phone itself, there is nothing not to like with this phone except maybe the lack of a case to house the unit and protect it from accidentally pressing the sensitive capacitative screen. Otherwise I’d be happy to consider it a replacement for my current phone – BlackBerry Torch 8900… IF…

OTHER REVIEWS
Windows 7 mobile
USA Today

Gizmodo

Engadget

PCWorld

TechRadar

ExpertReviews

HTD HD7
Gizmodo

PhoneArena

Stuff UK.TV

PHOTOS

Homepage of the HTC HD7

Back panel of the HTC HD7

Side view of the HTC HD7 showing buttons

Zune user interface on the HTC HD7