Gadgetory

what's up everyone John Brend your protec no Buffalo here's a full review for you of the Nokia Lumia 1020 this is the 41 megapixel bad boy that just came its way to AT&T let's put it through its paces and see if it's worth your hard-earned phone ban buck so let me begin this review as I do with all my phone reviews with a disclaimer I use this phone as my daily drive over for five days got a chance really get to know how to use it all the nuances and started my love affair up again with Windows Phone so let me start with call quality that's really the most important thing when it comes to phones no matter how many megapixels the phones gotten if doesn't make good phone calls it's not gonna be very good for you and so not surprisingly Kolkata is pretty awesome Todd tested his review unit in New York he had some different issues you can read the full review hit the link down below if you want to see his thoughts and how I performed in New York City including tethering which I did not test but I had no dropped calls at all had a really strong LT antenna and performed very well speaker volume was actually pretty loud as well if you like heavily on speaker phone no problem at all so we're gonna break this review up into several parts we're talking about the hardware I'm gonna talk about the software we're talking about the camera and we're gonna wrap it all up and give this guy a full TechnoBuffalo 1 out of 10 score so looking at the Lumia 1020 a very awkward looking phone if you look at it from the bottom down looks like a normal Lumia device the polycarbonate feels awesome it's really well built positions aren't looking at the top of the device looks a little strange it's got this giant camera of course is understandable could you pack in 41 megapixels in here but it does do some sort of odd things so the first thing I found the very first time I picked up the phone was it's really top-heavy usually when I hold the phone my finger comes along the back and I hold it if I want to scroll I just scroll with my finger if I let go though the phone starts to tilt forward you have to make sure you secure the phone on the bottom while you're using it to do any sort of one or two handed scrolling it's a bit cumbersome another issues and you put it down on the table it's got a huge rock on it so if you put it phone down you want to type or you want to watch a video it's going to rock back and forth and because it's going to rest is only the lowest point of the phone is what's gonna hit your table your surface it's that camera lens and this metal here scratches very very easily something definitely keep in mind doesn't matter what color you have either the yellow the black are you gonna white version this color is still the same so they're always gonna have that issue so definitely watch out for scratches the build quality that was typical Nokia or Nakia depending on where you live is absolutely outstanding like all Nokia phones of recent history this thing is built like a tank and feels absolutely awesome in the hands I loved his dedicated camera button i like that microsoft's mandating that's their one thing i did have some issues with it was location of the power and lock button located below the volume rocker now that's just personal preference i'm used to it being above from samsung phones but if you're used to using previous Nokia devices it's gonna feel like second nature coming for something else definitely be aware that that's how it's going to work other than after the harbor's exactly you'd expect it is awesome Nokia nailed the hardware out of the park I wish the obviously that could have been gone away at that camera hump but I'll deal with it 41 megapixel awesomeness so a couple crazy things about the build quality on the hardware if you shake it ever so slightly you can hear them ball bearings in the camera move and that's okay nothing is wrong with your phone I know if he actually advertises that it does this though I had to look it up and ask you know what that noise was but you can definitely hear it so the big story here hardware was that 41 megapixel camera captures 34 megapixel photos any five megapixel picture and a 16 by 9 aspect ratio or 39 megapixel and five megapixel in a four by three aspect ratio the spy resolution on the phone though is super low at least by flagship standards it's got a 1280 by 768 pixel resolution so all your zooming and stuff isn't gonna look as crisp as it would on a 1080p display that's more the fault with Microsoft though than it is of Nokia I'm not gonna go too in depth to this off for its Windows Phone 8 as we've seen it in previous generations actually thirteen months have passed since Windows Phone 8 was initially announced and everything about Windows Phone 8 is all here Nokia though did do some really cool things and the first one I talked about is the camera app that Nokia is calling the Nokia pro cam this is where you're gonna control all of the awesome functionality and manual control you can get with the Lumia 1020 it's pure view camera you can get really granular or let it do all the hard work for you I really like the UI that you sort of a half-circle do to control everything it's a really intuitive way to able to control everything on the phone from white balance ISO it's really everything else you can do on a DSLR you can do on the 1020 it's really impressive for someone who's maybe not the most camera savvy guy in the world I really enjoyed playing with it and seeing that things change in real time on the display when it comes to the camera software Nokia hit this one absolutely out of the park it is as easy to use as you can expect they did some awesome things with exposure and I can't say enough how great the camera is but for a phone is really main selling point is the camera you would expect it and if you're really looking for a device that you can use as maybe a DSLR replacement or at least a replacement for your point and shoot I really dub no worries at all about recommending the 1020 one thing I really do hate about the software is that photos can only be backed up to SkyDrive I love Google Drive I wish there was some sort of third party option but perhaps that will come at a later time all right next let's talk about battery this thing's rocking a 2000 milliamp hour about it let me tell you a little bit about my usage so you can put things into perspective usually I get up around 7 a.m. I put off the charger I've got two emails being checked every five minutes maybe about an hour or so of phone calls mostly connected to Wi-Fi at home or at the office but LTE radios are always turned on some like video viewing some gaming and just generally in phone just sitting idle most of the day I was it very easily able to get through a full day of battery life usually plugging it in around 11 o'clock at night with about 50% to 45 percent of battery life but and this is a huge but if you use the phone's camera quite a bit you're going to drain your battery life like crazy especially if you use that xenon flash what you really want the selling points of the phone you were going to be surprised how quickly all those milliamp hours are depleted if you use the camera you're gonna notice probably about 20 to 30 percent decrease in battery life just taking a five minute video and about 15 pictures I saw almost 20% of my battery life go away at the end of the day versus what I had otherwise so really if you're gonna be a heavy shooter be very careful what you're going to do with battery life or you wanta might want look at the camera grip because an external battery already built into it alright so I talked about the cameras software let's talk about the camera itself this is really the main selling point of this device and it really merits its own section of the review we did a full camera comparison with the Lumia 1020 versus the HTC One the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy s4 hit the link down below to check all those that you can see if they look like both crops and a full resolution you clearly get a sense of how it before in low-light highlighting different settings see if it's the right device for you so the moral here as expected the camera is really awesome the 41 megapixel sensor felt like a spy care most of time so Todd and I definitely agreed this is our favorite camera phone so far there's a bit of lag when you launch the camera about six seconds or so if when you hit the button so you can snap a photo there is lag also during the photo shot no rapid-fire like on Android phones or iOS ah that's worth it for me to get those high res images and again the camera software is absolutely awesome I know kia smart cam is great for action shots adding motion blur and more and the nokia creative studio is really fun for tweaking colors and really getting into the image I'm making sure you can get stuff exactly the way you want it so what's the verdict on the Lumia 1020 nokia did an incredible job what they had to work with where the phone falls short is in the Windows Phone side 13 months of an operating system is really a long time at Windows Phone is starting to show its age the low resolution dual core specs I really aren't what people expecting the biggest downfall I think of a 1020 is its launch price time you watch this video that price may already be slashed but $300 for a two-year contract is crazy should we need to consider the phones you could get without a subsidy for almost the same price it's really hard to recommend the 1020 but it is for certain subsets of people if you're looking for a camera that is absolutely outstanding you don't want to carry a separate point-and-shoot with you or maybe you don't want to carry a low-level DSLR the 1020 is really really awesome you're looking for a phone that just takes good pictures do I look at the HTC One or samsung galaxy s4 the hump is very weird to get used to it feels like a little bit awkward in the hands-on for that price point I just can't recommend a Windows Phone device at $300 that perhaps Windows Phone inal totally changed my opinion it will get a software update that'll make this phone the one to beat at least right now I've got a really hard time saying hey this is the phone you should get so the final verdict ear if you want a phone it's got an awesome camera you don't want to carry a point you shoot your DSLR with you and you go out the tenth one is gonna be an awesome choice if you want a good phone that's gonna do everything and also take decent pictures and I want to look at an Android or iOS all franked you're gonna get sort of the best of both worlds you're certainly not gonna get that crazy zoom where you can zoom in it's the absolutely everything like the needle in the haystack but you are gonna get a pretty decent camera it's a tough phone to recommend overall this gets a pretty solid eight on the TechnoBuffalo scale so thank you guys for watching hope you enjoyed our full review of the Lumia 1020 please give the video a thumbs up we must definitely appreciate it and again all the links I mentioned will be right down below including the full review which is gonna go into much more detail on the site at TechnoBuffalo comm thank you guys for watching I'm John R Ettinger I'll see you next video what's up everyone John here thank you for watching the video if you enjoyed it I certainly hope you did click on the subscribe button right under me and my pants region to get tons more tech videos from TechnoBuffalo we've got awesome unboxings comparisons reviews recaps and everything else you can think of in the tech world right here on the channel join the heart today if you want to check out some more content just click right over this way to see some other recent videos see you guys next time