Nokia Lumia 1520 Smartphone: 10 Reasons It’s Impressing Reviewers

By Don Reisinger

Nokia’s Lumia 1520 design won’t surprise anyone. The smartphone’s design looks similar to that of recent Windows Phone Lumia models. Still, Nokia’s decision to go with multiple colors, a rectangular design and a large screen with its phone models seems to be gaining favor with reviewers and buyers. After all, the company’s total sales hit a record 8.8 million units in the third quarter.

The Lumia 1520 is perhaps more aptly described as a phablet, a device that has smartphone features but with a screen that’s large enough to be considered a tablet. The reason for that is the device comes with a 6-inch screen. Considering the iPhone 5S comes with a 4-inch display, that’s an awfully big difference.

A big display is one thing, but if it lacks visual quality, it’s not all that appealing. That’s why Nokia decided to deliver Full HD 1,920-by-1,080 resolution with its Lumia 1520. With Full HD resolution, users shouldn’t have much trouble seeing fine detail in movies and even text.

The Lumia 1520 would seem like a massive power hog at first glance. However, the device has a maximum talk time of 20 hours on 2G and 24 hours on 3G. Music playback time is 95 hours. To put that into perspective, the iPhone 5S can only deliver 10 hours of 3G talk time and 40 hours of audio playback.

The Lumia 1520 is a completely wireless solution. As long as users have an accessory cover, they can place it on the charging pad and wirelessly recharge the handset juice. The future of charging technology is wireless, so it’s nice to see Nokia jumping on that bandwagon.

Nokia clearly believes that an important element to smartphone success is its PureView camera. The company has bundled a 20-megapixel PureView lens in the Lumia 1520. Although that won’t guarantee extremely high-quality visuals, folks should be able to snap photos that they can print out in large sizes.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 is arguably the best mobile processor on the market right. So, it’s nice to see Nokia bundle the quad-core 2.2GHz version of the chip in the Lumia 1520. With that processor, Nokia’s device should be able to handle just about any task the user throws at it.

It’s hard to argue with the price of Nokia’s Lumia 1520. Folks who preorder the handset at AT&T and sign up for a two-year agreement will get it for just $100. The Microsoft Store is offering preorders on the smartphone for $199, but offers a $50 app card and free white flip cover with its purchase. In other words, the Lumia 1520 is nicely affordable.

Considering Nokia’s device business will soon be acquired by Microsoft, it’s perhaps no surprise that the Lumia 1520 comes with Office built-in. That means users can view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files without having to download a third-party application. The software also includes support for SkyDrive.

Although Nokia has concentrated on selling its Lumia line in the consumer market, the company is making a subtle sales pitch to the enterprise with its Lumia 1520. On its site promoting the handset, in fact, Nokia includes an entire section on enterprise functionality, pointing to the inclusion of Office along with support for Exchange, Office 365 and Lync. Nokia has even added encryption and other security features, such as remote policy enforcement, that it says will appeal to corporate customers.