The Nokia Lumia 1020 – The phone I love to hate

Nokia have been REALLY pushing their Lumia 1020 handset, it’s their current flagship phone, it’s beautifully designed, and has a camera with a jaw dropping FOURTY ONE MEGAPIXEL sensor. On top of that it sports OIS – optical image stabilisation, the sensor is surrounded by tiny ball-bearings and it stabilises it as you shoot / film. Honestly, it’s a thing of beauty, I was unsure of the bulge in the back of it to start with, but you do kinda get used to it.

The thing is.

I fucking hate it.

But – annoyingly I love it too!

I’m still not sold on Windows Phone as an operating system, it feels limited, whilst it’s whizzy and rarely slows down, it’s just bloody annoying. Whilst the selection of apps is slowing increasing (Vine is now out, and Instagram on the way) I can’t Snapchat, I can’t Google+ / Hangout, heck, I can’t even see my Starbucks card balance (well I can in dollars with a 3rd party app!). As a daily driver, I just can’t use it. It’s fine for phone calls, and a cheeky look on Facebook and Twitter, texting is fine too, so my Galaxy S4 is still my main phone. The Lumia 1020 is still in my pocket with it though, because, really, the camera is BEAUTIFUL.

I love the fact I can take 34MP Images (each around 7mb-13mb ish), having good quality photos is SO IMPORTANT (as I discussed here), and whilst the S4 takes a cracking photo, the Lumia 1020 trounces it. The best thing is, the Nokia are constantly tweaking the camera, it’s even improved since I borrowed one from Nokia Connects a few months back. Even better, they’ll be adding RAW support in the next month or so, I’ve seen a few example photos using the RAW files and they are incredible (look here) click here to see the cat image in all its glorious detail.

Pretty epic eh?

I can just about forgive the fact the app selection is a bit dire still, and WP itself is ALMOST as limited as iOS because it’s simply the best camera on a phone, period.

I took that at Splash Landings Hotel at Alton Towers, I LOVE the colours on it – really captures the atmosphere perfectly! I really didn’t miss having my ‘big’ camera with me, the Lumia 1020 did a fantastic job.

I really do think if you love taking pictures on your phone, you NEED a Lumia 1020 in your life, but if you love your apps, and flexibility, you’ll have to look elsewhere for now.