Nokia has apparently decided that its next big strategy to increase market share is to make its phones bigger. The Lumia 1520 is the biggest Windows Phone yet, sobig that the only people who will find it easy to hold are professional basketball players.Star athletes usually go for what’s in vogue, and unfortunately for Nokia, that’s not Windows Phone. The specs of the Lumia 1520 are impressive it has a 1080p screen, a quad-core processor, and a fully capable 20-megapixel camera but all of that is marred by the wide, body and the fact that the handset is tied to a platform that’s still struggling to gain traction.
Nearly everyone I showed the Lumia 1520 to was taken aback by the phone’s gargantuan size. This isn’t a device that you can comfortably make a phone call with and forget about stowing it in your pocket. You’ll need both hands to hold it, and unless you have especially large hands, you’ll find the Lumia 1520 difficult to grip all the way around. I had to store the 1520 in the tablet portion of my unusually roomy messenger bag because it wouldn’t fit in any of the designated phone pockets. And when I was snapping photos outside, I felt self-conscious with all the passersby gawking at the big red device I was carrying.
Nearly everyone I showed the Lumia 1520 to was taken aback by the phone’s gargantuan size. This isn’t a device that you can comfortably make a phone call with and forget about stowing it in your pocket. You’ll need both hands to hold it, and unless you have especially large hands, you’ll find the Lumia 1520 difficult to grip all the way around. I had to store the 1520 in the tablet portion of my unusually roomy messenger bag because it wouldn’t fit in any of the designated phone pockets. And when I was snapping photos outside, I felt self-conscious with all the passersby gawking at the big red device I was carrying.
The Lumia 1520 is essentially a mini television set. I admit that I spent the better part of my time with it watching Hulu Plus on its 6-inch 1080p IPS LCD screen. At 368 pixels per inch, the 1520’s display is almost on a par with that of industry rivals such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, which has a pixel density of 388 ppi. But unlike the Note 3, the Lumia 1520 offers well-saturated colors, and the polarized ClearBlack display makes it easy to see outside in broad daylight. The Note 3 has a slightly better viewing angle, but the color accuracy on the Lumia 1520 makes for a better viewing experience.
The Lumia 1520 comes with a 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and 2GB of RAM. This is Nokia’s first quad-core phone, but unlike Android, Windows Phone has always been optimized to run on very specific hardware, which is why Nokia has been able to get away with dual-core processors all this time. That extra processing power ensures smoother transitions between screens, faster-loading apps and games, and quicker camera shots compared with its predecessors. It also future-proofs the phone for the large influx of games that are apparently making their way to the Windows Phone platform.
All of those pixels and all of that processing power could have used a better battery pack. On standby, the Lumia 1520’s 3400mAh battery lasts a long time, but if you watch video and play games at full brightness, you’ll see the battery meter drop fast.
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