Nokia Lumia 1020 Review in 2017

Nokia Lumia 1020 Review in 2017 – Still worth buying?

Nokia Lumia 1020 has been around for a long time. This phone is one of the best camera phone at the release time. Now it’s been 4 years since launch date, is it still worth buying? Let’s talk about that in this article. In this article, I will not make a comprehensive review, but I will be more to the conclusion whether Nokia Lumia 1020 is still worth buying or not. First of all, is it Lumia 1020 is still reliable for daily use or for our main phone? The simple answer is NO. Unless your main usage is only to make a voice call and send text message, then this phone is not recommended to support your productivity. The main reason is that many application developers are leaving the Windows Phone operating system. If we open the Windows Store, there are many applications that not updated by the developers. For example, the BBM application, as we can see, the last update is last year. So once again, if you need a mobile phone to support your productivity, then Lumia 1020 is not recommended for you for this reason.

OK, that is the main flaw. But now let’s talk about the things I like in this phone. First, for an old phone, the Nokia 1020 is still quite responsive to use. Second, the body size is comfortable to hold and have a good build quality. Third, the screen is very sensitive and comfortable to use. And strangely, although the screen is not too big, but if used for typing, it feels very comfortable and it feels more precise compared with Android phones that have the same screen size. And fourth, I really like the AMOLED screen. The color is so punchy, vivid and has a solid black color. Of course, if you prefer more natural color, we can change the appearance at display settings. But then again, with all the advantages, it will pretty useless for a smartphone if there is no guarantee for the software update. So, the only thing that this phone really can offer is the camera capability. Is it in year 2017, Nokia 1020 is still the best camera phone at the market? Let’s find out. I am personally not an expert in the field of photography, so we can say that my opinion from a view of an amateur. This phone has a 41MP camera sensor, but we will not be able to produce images with a maximum resolution of 41MP. The maximum resolution that can be generated is 38 MP. If we take photos using Lumia Camera app, it will produce two photos at once. One photo as a 5MP resolution and the other is 38MP or 34MP depending on aspect ratio. The funny thing is, if we open Gallery, we cannot view or open the full-size image. We only can find the 5MP picture. If we want to see the image with the maximum resolution, we need to open the file manager application. It is inside the Camera Roll folder, we will find a photo written with high rest text which the abbreviation of high resolution.

How big is 38MP? Just see this comparison image. For other photo result, you may see the following photos. Nokia Lumia 1020 can produce a really good night photography picture. We can take long exposure photos by adjusting the shutter speed up to 4 seconds. In the year 2017 it is rare for a smartphone that have this feature. Just for note, if we want to take a long exposure picture, we need to use tripod or the picture will be blurry. Let’s see the night photography picture taken by Lumia 1020. This phone also has xenon flash which of course much more powerful than LED flash. Here is an example of taking photos in very low light places using Xenon lights. Even so, the Nokia Lumia 1020 camera also has shortcomings.

First of all, the times needed to save each full resolution picture is rather slow. But it’s still manageable considering the large photo resolution. And second, Nokia 1020 is not very good to take a macro photos. Minimum distance to take photos is 15 cm. It will out of focus if we need to take photo closer than that. Although we can zoom after we take photos, but the result is not as good as if the lens closer to the object. Now we will test the video recording ability. This phone can record up to Full HD 1080p at 30 fps. There are two main advantages of Nokia 1020 video recording capabilities. The first is the camera sensor is equipped with OIS or Optical Image Stabilization. This will make the video recording is smoother even though the user is recording in a moving condition. It’s not help much, but better than none. Let’s just see the comparison. And the second is, because it has 41 MP sensors, we can do ZOOM while recording video without significantly reducing the quality of the end result. And the drawback is, this phone does not have a memory card slot. Internal memory capacity of 32GB is quite large, but of course it would be better if we can add external sd card. The conclusion is, can we say in 2017, the Nokia 1020 is still one of the best camera phone out there? The answer is Yes, it is still one of the best camera phone. It’s still can compete with today’s generation phone.

However, for the question, is it worth to buy? The answer is depending on your need. If you want to use it as your main phone or if you are looking for a phone that will be used in the long term, then I’m not recommend this phone. The main reason is because of the outdated software and the availability of the applications. Besides that, nowadays many affordable mobile phones that also have a good quality camera. However, if money is not a problem for you, then Nokia 1020 might be a good phone for you to buy as a collection. We can say that it is one of its kind and it’s one of the biggest camera resolution out there, even for today’s standard. In addition, the phone is also reliable as a replacement for a pocket camera while traveling. If we compared it with pocket camera, Then Nokia 1020 has three main advantages. One, it is more comfortable to operate. Two, we can easily recharge If the battery runs out. We just have to plug to the power bank. And lastly, we are easy to share the captured images, because after all this is a smartphone with a complete connectivity.