Gadgetory

which Nokia smartphone is better that's what we're here to find out I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is the Lumia icon versus a Lumia 1020 the Lumia 1020 is still one of the most progressive smartphones in recent memory the 41 megapixel image sensor defined the phone and put Nokia's biggest competitors on their heads to date it's still capable of taking the most impressive pictures of any smartphone by far with the exception of its distant Symbian cousin the 808 PureView the 1020 was groundbreaking nonetheless and Nokia is continuing that momentum by bringing other impressive handsets to more carriers into the Lumia icon which will launch on Verizon Wireless later this week how does it compare with the 1020 does the Lumia icon share the 1020 s impressive photo taking capabilities or can we toss the icon into the ever-growing pile of disappointing CDMA windows phones let's take a few minutes to find out shall we on the outside the Lumia icon is pretty drastically different from pretty much all the other Lumia smartphones made in the last few years on the other hand the Lumia 1020 is practically identical to all the others - what my colleague Michael Fisher calls an Oreo on the backside most recent Lumia smartphones have all featured the same rounded edges unibody polycarbonate build the flat top and bottom edges they've usually been bright and colorful and very distinctly Nokia design the Lumia 900 920 10 2015 20 and most in between - the Lumia 925 have all very closely resembled the Lumia icon however is very squared and industrial or the matte finished metal band wrapping around the edges and a matte polycarbonate backside and there are two slightly lighter tone stripes on either side of the microUSB port on the bottom and 3.5 millimeter port on the top edge and unlike more recent models like the 1020 in 1520 the camera on the backside of the icon is entirely flush we imagine all these discrepancies are thanks to Verizon but for once we're not complaining though we could do without the unsightly logo on the top left corner of the face and the tramp stamp on the back sizing the icon up with a 1020 despite the larger display on the icon the two are very similar in size at 137 millimeters tall the icon is six point six millimeters taller than that in 20 but at zero point four millimeters narrower and zero point six millimeters thinner and the icon in tints when you hit the scales at 167 and 158 grams respectively the biggest set of differences between these two flagships from Nokia however are the beefy specs lists being that the 1020 launched in late July 2013 its specifications have slowly started to age just slightly inside it has 2 gigabytes of RAM 32 gigabytes of storage a 2000 milliamp hour battery and a Snapdragon s4 SOC composed of a 1.5 gigahertz dual-core Krait CPU and Adreno 225 GPU the camera of course is rated at 41 megapixels in the display measures 4.5 diagonal inches and bears a resolution of 1280 by 768 pixels the Lumia icon also has 2 gigabytes of RAM 32 gigabytes of fixed storage but it's battery is 24 20 milliamp hours and it comes with a much more powerful Snapdragon 800 chipset composed of a 2.2 gigahertz quad-core Krait 400 CPU and Adreno 330 GPU the image sensor is rated at 20 megapixels and the display is 5 inches diagonally with 1080p resolution both have NFC Wi-Fi AC and Bluetooth 4.0 the icon also has qi wireless charging built-in whereas the 1020 does not there are two major differences with the displays both have great blacks of course and the colors are super saturated but the higher density of the icons 1080p panel is visible to the naked eye edges of the homescreen tiles are noticeably smoother than those on the 1020 and viewing angles the icon seems to have slightly better side visibility a more minor note at in twenties display appears to be slightly warmer than the icons other than that the display differences are negligible in terms of design and hardware alone the 1020 is definitely more distinct or the icon is more understated not everyone will like the stark industrial design of the icon but we're smitten with it we still haven't gotten over the awkward way the 1020 lays on a table both the Lumia 1020 and Ikon are running in the same version of Windows Phone software update 3 with a Nokia Lumia black update almost everything is exactly the same feature for feature except for two first the glance feature the Lumia icon does not support glance due to some hardware restrictions and that's seriously unfortunate as it's one of our favorite Nokia Windows Home features to date the other is density or tiles will fit on the Lumia icons home screen than the 1020 aside from that the usual stuff comes prepackaged the Nokia camera app cinemagraph mix radio screen gamers storyteller and much more the important question is how noticeable are the spec improvements on the icon over the 1020 as far as opening closing and switching apps everyday performance it's going to be virtually identical the faster clock speed of the icon CPU does cut the initial launch time of applications each application opens a split second faster on the icon but switching between previously opened applications happens at exactly the same speed scrolling web browsing and all basic interactions will be virtually the exact same the biggest difference performance wise would be in gaming thanks to the beefier GPU and extra CPU cores it's simply a more powerful chipset that's visible in various benchmarks and will be visible in graphically intense games for instance the icon was able to complete the SunSpider test and just over half the time of the 1024 most the difference won't matter for some this is just what the doctor ordered as far as battery life goes we haven't quite had the icon long enough to provide detailed analysis but we can compare them quantitatively the icon has a 24 20 milliamp hour battery to the 1020's 2000 milliamp hour battery but the icon also has roughly doubled of pixels and more screen real estate we've seen that the Snapdragon 800 is relatively power efficient but there's no reason to believe just yet that the icon stamina will be significantly better than the 1020 s testing camera quality was a bit interesting between these mainly because we knew the 1020 had a significant advantage from the start the 41 megapixel sensor has been the subject of much praise since last summer it's still the smart phone camera to be despite all the tough competition the icons camera does a decent job of taking some of the best parts of the 1020 s camera and packing them down into a reasonable size it's still very respectable and more and practically all other smartphone cameras out there the 1020 is capable of taking much higher res Raw shots up to 38 megapixels the thing is those differences are never going to matter if you're only ever going to use the five megapixel images which are shared from the phone by default but the advantages are barely noticeable if at all whitebalance continues to be an issue with both models however the 1020 airs heavily on the warm side and the icon more so on the cool side making the tint Winnie's pictures seem more lively while the icons are more true to life but still a little bull just know that both of these phones have powerful image sensors to sum the 10 20s larger sensor will pay off but we imagine few will complain about the icons image sensing prowess so which Lumia is the better smartphone overall from a design standpoint we fancy the slimmer more bold chassis of the icon but the 1020's design is adored despite the Oreo bolted on the back the internals across the board are better on the icon but the payoff is miniscule if you're not a gamer the only major improvement over the 1020 found on the icon is the display and it's substantial the display is more balanced and sharper it's also larger without drastically increasing the phone's footprint it's unfortunate the 1020 doesn't have sheet charging and it's almost as if setting that the icon doesn't have glance the 1020 manages to edge out the iconic image sensing but we feel the icon is an all around better foam and this makes us very excited for the 1020 successor Nokia just keeps getting better and better at what it does thanks for watching everyone if you're enjoying these videos be sure to click the thumbs up button below and subscribe to the channel to see more videos in the future as well as more Lumia icon coverage over the next week be sure to follow us in all the usual places twitter facebook and google+ at pocket now I'm Taylor Martin you can find me on twitter at cast protect and i will see you next time