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Home > Phone Reviews >Nokia Lumia 1520
Nokia Lumia 1520
What's Hot: Big full HD IPS display, top notch specs, usual Lumia elegant and unique design.
What's Not: This is a huge phone! Windows app store selection is getting better but still doesn't match Android and IOS selection.
Reviewed December 6, 2013 by Lisa Gade, Editor
in Chief (twitter: @lisagade)
And now for those who want something smaller than the Nokia Lumia 2520, we have the Nokia Lumia 1520 smartphone, released at the same time as Nokia's first Windows tablet. The Lumia 1520 has a few firsts as well: it's the first Windows phone phablet, the first with a full HD display and the first to sport a quad core processor. Nice! Though the 6" Lumia 1520 might be too big for some, there's no denying the temptations of a Windows Phone that finally competes spec for spec with flagship Android phones. And the Lumia manages to beat most with its 20 megapixel main camera with dual LED flash and Carl Zeiss lens.
The Lumia 1520 is exclusive to AT&T in the US, and it's available in red, black, yellow and white. All have a matte finish except the red that's glossy. We love the red's look, but it is both large and slippery. The black looks very classy and the yellow... well it's a signature color that we loved on the Nokia Lumia 1020. The design language is distinctly Lumia, and that's a good thing because it's unique and pleasingly clean and modern. This is a 7.26 ounce phone, and though it's a little lighter than the notoriously heavy HTC One max, it's still almost as heavy as the Kindle Paperwhite 6" E-Ink eReader. That said, it's more compact than the Paperwhite, thanks in part to the different display aspect ratio, but also because phone makers like Nokia work hard to make even their phablets as compact as possible.
Serious Internals
This is a 4G LTE smartphone with 16 gigs of storage and a microSD card slot for storage expansion. The phone runs on a 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad core CPU with 2 gigs of RAM and Adreno 330 graphics, making it the fastest Windows 8 phone to date. It should have the necessary specs to receive OS updates for some time to come, though that's up to Nokia and Microsoft (Microsoft now owns Nokia's phone business). The phone has Bluetooth 4.0 and dual band WiFi 802.11ac as well as NFC.
Display
The Nokia Lumia 1520 has a 6" IPS full HD display with glove-friendly touch and Nokia's ClearBlack technology. It's a really lovely display that's viewable outdoors and it has bold and pleasing colors. Windows Phone 8 handles higher resolutions well, though some UI elements seem needlessly large. Live Tiles are sized well and we appreciate the added real estate and number of viewable tiles. The big display makes this feel more like a tablet, and I suspect that's exactly what the target audience (phablet buyers) wants.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 3, HTC One max and Nokia Lumia 1520.
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