Showing posts with label Nokia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nokia. Show all posts
Monday, 30 September 2013
Friday, 27 September 2013
HTC violated two Nokia patents, US trade judge says
Taiwan's HTC has infringed on two patents held by Nokia related to cellphones and tablets, a judge at a powerful U.S. trade court said Monday.
In a preliminary ruling, Judge Thomas Pender of the U.S. International Trade Commission said HTC has infringed U.S. patents 7,415,247 and 6,393,260.
The first covers a method for receiving and transmitting radio signals, and the second a method for eliminating unwanted signals. The two patents were among three that Nokia claimed were used by HTC in its mobile phones.
The third, U.S. patent 5,884,190, covers data communications from a computer to a mobile network. Pender found no infringement of that patent.
The initial decision is expected to be followed by a full decision in the latter part of January 2014.
The ITC has the ability to block any product from being imported into the U.S. if it's found to use technology covered in another company's patent. For that reason, the ITC has become a popular place for tech companies to file infringement cases in the past few years.
The case is investigation 337-TA-847, "Certain electronic devices, including mobile phones and tablet computers, and components thereof," at the ITC in Washington, D.C.
Martyn Williams covers mobile telecoms, Silicon Valley and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Martyn on Twitter at @martyn_williams. Martyn's e-mail address is martyn_williams@idg.com
Martyn Williams covers mobile telecoms, Silicon Valley and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service.
More by Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
Monday, 9 September 2013
Leaked Nokia Lumia 1520 pics suggest a supersized, 1080p Windows phone coming soon
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Thursday, 5 September 2013
Wednesday, 4 September 2013
Will Nokia help Microsoft regain relevance with businesses?
Microsoft rocked the tech world today with the announcement that it is spending about $7 billion to acquire Nokia. The move has a variety of potential benefits and ramifications, and many of those could have an impact on how your business relates to Microsoft in the years to come.
For many small and medium businesses, the chaos that seems to surround Microsoft may seem like cause for concern. Businesses don’t like change and uncertainty, but the tech landscape has shifted and Microsoft needs to adapt or die. Whichever direction Microsoft goes, it will mean change for the businesses that rely on Microsoft products and services.
Purchasing Nokia puts Microsoft in direct control of its own mobile future. Who knows what the true motive for buying Nokia is or Microsoft’s ultimate goal?. Microsoft has already gotten into the device market with the Surface tablet line, and it recently restructured its business units to focus more on devices, so acquiring Nokia to get directly involved in manufacturing smartphones makes some sense. That’s more or less the pitch Microsoft made to investors as its rationale for buying Nokia.
Perhaps it has something to do with the impending change in Microsoft leadership. Steve Ballmer recently announced his imminent departure, and Nokia’s CEO—Stephen Elop—is an ex-Microsoft executive considered by many to be a frontrunner for the role.
Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group, thinks the move may have been necessary for the fate of both Nokia itself and the Windows Phone mobile platform. “Given Nokia was really the last company providing a Windows Phone line—but still in trouble—it makes sense that the two firms tie more tightly together," he says. "Starting over from scratchshould Nokia fail would have been excessively expensive, and they are gaining share.”
Enderle also concurs that buying Nokia might be a move to acquire Elop and smooth the transition of leadership. “This should give them Elop as a viable replacement for Ballmer," he says. "The board appears focused on mobile as the way to expand, and Elop knows Microsoft and its problems. He could more effectively hit the ground running.”
Microsoft has been between a rock and a hard place for a few years now, and it’s probably going to get tougher before it gets easier—if it ever gets easier. As the world has migrated away from traditional PCs to mobile platforms, Microsoft has been faced with a seemingly impossible dilemma: plow ahead with the status quo to keep its core customers happy and die a slow death or evolve to remain competitive in an increasingly mobile tech world and risk losing major sources of revenue.
Microsoft has been slow to recognize challenges to its dominance and even slower to adapt and try to address those challenges head on. Its efforts so far—Windows Phone, and the Surface tablets—are well-engineered and have received a fair share of praise from analysts, media, and consumers. Yet the reality remains that they’ve failed so far to shift Microsoft’s waning relevance.
The silver lining for Microsoft is that as hard as it is for the tech juggernaut to shift direction, it’s almost as difficult for Microsoft customers to shift gears. In spite of Microsoft’s lethargy, no rival has stepped in to seize the opportunity. There are alternatives out there, and some businesses have abandoned Windows, or Microsoft Office, or other Microsoft products and services, but the competition is generally lacking and doesn’t offer a clear, compelling reason to change.
Can Microsoft rise from the ashes and retain its dominant role for small and medium businesses, or is it just too little, too late? Check back in a year or two and we’ll see how it’s going.
Updated at 2:20 p.m. PT with a video report from IDG News Service.
Tony is principal analyst with the Bradley Strategy Group, providing analysis and insight on tech trends. He is a prolific writer on a range of technology topics, has authored a number of books, and is a frequent speaker at industry events.
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Why Surface won't be submerged by Microsoft's Nokia acquisition
Don't let all the talk about service synergies and sales teams fool you: Microsoft gobbled up Nokia to ensure Windows Phone's ongoing survival and bolster the "devices" portion of its newly refocused "devices and services" business.
But wait! Hasn't Microsoft already spent more than $1 billion in resources on an in-house device brand? Indeed it has. And while the newly minted marriage between Nokia and Microsoft almost certainly crushes any hope for a Surface-branded phone—at least in the near future—it doesn't mean the end of the Surface line.
Let's get the low-hanging fruit out of the way first.
The Surface's VaporMg chamfers would've looked pretty sweet on a smartphone. Microsoft has said in the past that it has no immediate plans to introduce a Surface phone. The Nokia purchase solidifies this position—and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
"I'm not even sure what the value of a Surface brand would be on smartphones," says Ross Rubin, the principal analyst at Reticle Research. "First of all, 'Surface' implies a larger area on which to do something and get things done. And of course, one of the things the Surface tablets struggle with is the focus on the add-on keyboard—which is without a doubt its signature feature. But if you don't need a virtually omnipresent keyboard, it's a double-edged sword… and we've seen significant dwindling of phones with mini-keyboards, like the BlackBerry Q10."
But beyond the Surface phone concept alone, Rubin's sage words drive home why the Surface won't be sucked into the abyss just yet.
While Microsoft touted "One brand, united voice" after announcing the Nokia acquisition, mashing everything together under a single brand simply doesn't make much sense yet.
It might make sense if Microsoft bought all of Nokia. Nokia's a much more recognizable name than the fledgling Surface hardware brand—but Microsoft bought Nokia's devices business, not the Nokia name itself. The Lumia brand (which Microsoft will presumably soon own) isn't as well-known as "Nokia." What's more, the Lumia brand's bold design and colorful exteriors target a whole different audience than the stark, VaporMg-clad Surface slates.
"It's targeting a very different audience," says Ben Bajarin, the director of consumer technology at Creative Strategies. "A product like a Surface, or even a PC or hybrid or two-in-one, targets a very different audience that what Lumia's been doing with the colors."
Lumia smartphones like this Lumia 920 are known for their attractive design, killer camera, and color explosion—none of which screams "productivity." Simply put: The Surface is for work—despite what Microsoft's fast-cut, dubstep-tinged advertising blitz may have you believe—and the Lumia line is for consumers. And while the line is growing increasingly blurry thanks to BYOD, there is still a difference between the two.
"Microsoft may try to repurpose Surface to something that's more keyboard-focused, where Lumia becomes its brand for smaller tablets, where keyboards make increasingly less sense and there's perhaps even more synergy with the smartphone line," says Rubin. "Surface could evolve to become, basically, Microsoft's PC [and PC replacement] brand."
If nothing else, Microsoft and Nokia are both said to be in the advanced stages of releasing new tablets, in the form of second-gen Surface slates and Nokia's first foray into tablets. Given how far along the companies are said to be on those products, both Rubin and Bajarin expect them to launch under their respective Surface/Lumia brands, rather than a possible newly formed line.
But even if Lumia and Surface stay separate yet equal, the Nokia acquisition will still pay dividends for the Surface line.
"The quality of the Nokia Windows Phone experience will give more incentive to the Surface team to double down on Microsoft-owned tablets," predicts Forrester analyst Ted Schadler.
The acquisition should have much more tangible benefits for Microsoft's new Devices division, as well.
"Nokia has some very smart hardware people," Bajarin says. "They have good hardware engineers. They have good hardware designers. They have people who are very good at those things. Microsoft does not have people who are good at those things. [Microsoft] has acquired quite a lot of hardware expertise to manage and integrate into their mobile device division."
And beyond that, Nokia's supply chain borders on legendary. Microsoft can lean on that to bolster its small Surface line, both for manufacturing and for expanding Surface to more countries and more retailers.
Yes, the phone is the key to everything, but the Nokia acquisition pays dividends far beyond simple smartphones. The manufacturing prowess that Nokia brings to the table, merged with Microsoft's deep pockets, opens up many doors for Lumia, Surface, and Microsoft's entire push into Devices.
"They have a lot of different paths they can take for hardware," says Bajarin, "And I can see them getting into all kinds of different hardware."
And with that, we can't help but ponder the plethora of hardware possibilities. Sure, a productivity-friendly mobile display would pretty obviously fall under the Surface brand, but like a Surface phone, the long-rumored Surface smartwatch could very well die an ignoble death at the hands of Lumia.
Brad Chacos spends the days jamming to Spotify, digging through desktop PCs and covering everything from BYOD tablets to DIY tesla coils.
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Clockwise Podcast 8: Amazon, Nokia, iPhone, and AT&T
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Microsoft's Nokia deal could benefit other Windows partners, analysts say
Microsoft’s plan to buy Nokia’s phone business and have a larger presence in hardware devices has so far brought little response from PC and smartphone vendors in Asia. But the deal could end up bringing dividends to Microsoft’s long-time partners in the region by revitalizing the Windows ecosystem, according to analysts.
Windows Phone licensee HTC is still assessing the impact of Microsoft’s $7 billion acquisition of Nokia’s mobile phone business, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Huawei Technologies, another licensee, said the acquisition deal would not affect its cooperation with Microsoft, while smartphone maker ZTE also said it would continue developing Windows Phone devices while there was demand for them—and as long as the OS remained fair and open, as with Google’s approach to buying Motorola Mobility, which makes phones running the Android OS that Google develops.
Other Windows Phone licensees such as Samsung Electronics declined to comment.
The U.S. software giant’s previous moves at competing in the hardware space have not always been welcomed by its partners.
Following last year’s unveiling of Microsoft’s Windows Surface tablet, Taiwanese PC maker Acer was vocal in its opposition to the product, stating that it would disrupt the PC ecosystem. Lenovo, while less worried about the Surface product, was also opposed to Microsoft supplying hardware.
The Suface's future will probably not be affected by Nokia's mobile business. Although shipments of the Surface tablet have been weak, Microsoft’s plan to buy Nokia’s phone business signals the company doesn’t plan to let up in hardware. The deal, which is expected to close in next year’s first quarter, will give Microsoft access to Nokia’s design and sales teams, along with its manufacturing facilities across the world.
“The PC vendors are definitely concerned about Microsoft’s approach,” said Nicole Peng, an analyst with research firm Canalys. “Since Microsoft launched its Surface, PC vendors have been preparing for when Microsoft will have its own hardware team.”
But Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia’s phone business may not necessarily clash with the direction of its partners, analysts said.
Outside of Nokia, smartphone vendors including HTC, Samsung, and Huawei have all been gradually moving away from Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS in favor of Android, said Melissa Chau, an analyst with research firm IDC. In Asia, over 90 percent of the Windows Phone devices on the market come from Nokia, she added.
“All the shipments we’ve seen have been very small,” Chau said. “I don’t think we are going to see any huge outrage on the smartphone side.”
Tuesday, 3 September 2013
Microsoft explains the Nokia deal: The phone is key to everything
In a Tuesday morning conference call to investors, Microsoft will justify why it acquired Nokia’s hardware business for a tad over $7 billion: It all starts with the phone.
In its “strategic rationale” explaining the deal, slide 15 of Microsoft’s presentation makes the case that the foundation for Windows PCs begins with Windows Phone, and pushes forward something of a domino effect toward platform dominance. Microsoft’s focus hasn’t shifted away from its “devices and services” message, but the balance of the company’s mantra seems to have tilted toward prioritizing hardware over software.
”Windows: 300M+ devices a year,” the slide notes. “Success in phone is important to success in tablets. Success in tablets will help PCs.” Elsewhere on the page, Microsoft notes that “high value experiences light up on great devices”.
”We will take additional steps to promote the app ecosytem for Windows,” the deck adds.
Slide 15 of Microsoft’s presentation to investors suggests the company is looking to juice all hardware sales with phone buzz. It firmly cements a drift away from Microsoft’s historical PC-centric focus. But Microsoft’s no stranger to realpolitik: If the market’s moving in the direction of the smartphone and tablet, Microsoft will follow.
The slide deck will apparently be used as the basis for Microsoft’s conference call with Wall Street analysts Tuesday morning, when Microsoft will explain how the Nokia acquisition will fit in with its current strategy.
In July, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer reorganized the company, flattening the company’s organizational structure and pushing technologies, not products, across Microsoft. What Ballmer and Microsoft clearly hope to do is continue that trend, and make the Windows Phone platform the focus of the Nokia deal, not the Lumia hardware. If hardware partners buy that argument, then Microsoft will have won a key battle of perception.
But that’s a long shot. Microsoft will have its work cut out to convince companies like HTC that they still have a place at the Windows Phone table. The smart money says that Microsoft may not bother: According to AdDuplex, Nokia’s phones represent under 10 percent of all Windows Phone ad traffic, and they’re declining. Nokia owns 85 percent of the Windows Phone market, and its own share is heading up.
Steve Ballmer on Microsoft's Nokia Devices & Services buy
Editor’s Note: On Monday evening, Microsoft announced it was buying Nokia’s Devices & Services division, giving Redmond an in-house hardware arm for its Windows Phone platform. Here’s the letter CEO Steve Ballmer sent to Microsoft employees announcing the move.
We announced some exciting news today: We have entered into an agreement to purchase Nokia’s Devices & Services business, which includes their smartphone and mobile phone businesses, their award-winning design team, manufacturing and assembly facilities around the world, and teams devoted to operations, sales, marketing and support.
For Microsoft, this is a bold step into the future and the next big phase of the transformation we announced on July 11.
We are very excited about the proposal to bring the best mobile device efforts of Microsoft and Nokia together. Our Windows Phone partnership over the past two and half years has yielded incredible work - the stunning Lumia 1020 is a great example. Our partnership has also yielded incredible growth. In fact, Nokia Windows Phones are the fastest-growing phones in the smartphone market.
Now is the time to build on this momentum and accelerate our share and profits in phones. Clearly, greater success with phones will strengthen the overall opportunity for us and our partners to deliver on our strategy to create a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most.
We have laid out Microsoft’s strategic rationale for this transaction in a presentation that I encourage you to read.
This is a smart acquisition for Microsoft, and a good deal for both companies. We are receiving incredible talent, technology and IP. We’ve all seen the amazing work that Nokia and Microsoft have done together.
Given our long partnership with Nokia and the many key Nokia leaders that are joining Microsoft, we expect a smooth transition and great execution.
As is always the case with an acquisition, the first priority is to keep driving through close, which we expect in the first quarter of 2014, following approval by Nokia’s shareholders, regulatory approvals, and other closing conditions.
But I also know people will have some questions about what happens post-close. While details aren’t final, here is what we know, and how we’re generally approaching integration:
Stephen Elop will be coming back to Microsoft, and he will lead an expanded Devices team, which includes all of our current Devices and Studios work and most of the teams coming over from Nokia, reporting to me.Julie Larson-Green will continue to run the Devices and Studios team, and will be focused on the big launches this fall including Xbox One and our Surface enhancements. Julie will be joining Stephen’s team once the acquisition closes, and will work with him to shape the new organization.As part of the acquisition, a number of key engineering leaders will be joining Microsoft from Nokia, reporting to Stephen in his new capacity:• Jo Harlow, who will continue to lead the Smart Devices team
• Timo Toikkanen, who will continue to lead the Mobile Phones team
• Stefan Pannenbecker, who will lead Design
• Juha Putkiranta, who will lead the integration effort on Nokia’s behalfRegarding the sales team, we plan to keep the Nokia field team, led by Chris Weber, intact and as the nexus of the devices sales effort, so that we can continue to build sales momentum. After the deal closes, Chris and his team will be placed under Kevin Turner. We will develop a single integrated team that is selling to operators, and there may be other integration opportunities that we can pursue. Kevin will work with Chris Weber and Chris Capossela to make those plans.Our operating system team under Terry Myerson will continue unchanged, with a mission of supporting both first-party and third-party hardware innovation. We are committed to working with partners, helping them build great products and great businesses on our platform, and we believe this deal will increase our partner value proposition over time. The established rhythms and ways of working between Terry and his team and the incoming Nokia team will serve us well to ensure that we do not disrupt our building momentum.We are planning to integrate all global marketing under Tami Reller and Mark Penn. It is very important that we pursue a unified brand and advertising strategy as soon as possible.Finance, Legal, HR, Communications, DX / Evangelism, Customer Care and Business Development will integrate functionally at Microsoft. Sourcing, customer logistics and supply chain will be part of Stephen’s Devices organization. ICM / IT will also integrate functionally for traditional IT roles. We will need to work through the implications for factory systems given the differing manufacturing processes and systems at both Nokia and Microsoft.We plan to pursue a single set of supporting services for our devices, and we will figure out how to combine the great Nokia efforts into our Microsoft services as we go through the integration process.There are no significant plans to shift where work is done in the world as we integrate, so we expect the Nokia teams to stay largely in place, geographically.Tom Gibbons will lead the integration work for Microsoft.
While today’s announcement is big news, we have to stay heavily focused on running the current business. We have a huge fall and holiday season ahead of us, so we need to execute flawlessly and continue to drive our business forward. I have no doubt we will.
Tuesday, 27 August 2013
Windows Store ad firm sees evidence of new Surface slates, Nokia tablet in its server logs
A new generation of Surface slates may be headed our way, if a new report by advertising firm AdDuplex is any indication, and Microsoft's self-made tablets may be bringing a friend along with them: A Windows RT device crafted by Nokia.
News of refreshed Surface tablets isn't exactly shocking, as Nvidia has confirmed that a next-gen Surface RT slate in the works and Microsoft has been steeply discounting the first generation Surface tablets in a bid to clear stock room shelves.
AdDuplex claims to "regularly see devices named Microsoft Corporation Surface 2 and Microsoft Corporation Surface with Windows 8.1 Pro" on its network, which provides advertising for 393 Windows Store apps. The first device looks to be a completely new model, AdDuplex claims, but the new Surface Pro device might be a first-gen Surface Pro running an RTM version of Windows 8.1.
That said, the firm claims prior preview versions of the Windows 8.1 update didn't change the reported name of the Pro, and a refreshed Surface Pro is almost a given. The original tablet suffered from poor battery life and a slightly chunky design, and those two problems could be significantly reduced if a Surface Pro with Intel's new power-sipping Haswell processors is released.
Digi-wo.comAn alleged image of Nokia's Windows RT slate, as leaked on digi-wo.com. Repeated rumors have also had Nokia working on a Windows RT device, and AdDuplex claims that Nokia-made Windows 8/RT devices have been pinging its servers since last October.
The device was named RX-107. Then we’ve seen RX-108. And then RX-113, 114, 115, 116. Interestingly enough we haven’t seen RX-109 through RX-112. So it’s hard to say if all of these are just variations of one device progressing through development stages, or 2 device lines (107-108 and 113-116) or something else .
Monday morning, The Verge reported that Nokia's slate is dubbed "Sirius" and will resemble an oversized version of the company's popular Lumia line of Windows Phones. According to the site's sources, the Sirius tablet will be thinner and lighter than an iPad, with a 10.1-inch 1080p display, 2GB of RAM, and a cutting-edge Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor. Even better: Nokia is reportedly shooting for 10 hours of battery life.
If Nokia does release a Windows RT slate of its own, it'll have an uphill climb: Windows RT itself is tanking hard, and thus far, third-party Windows tablets—especially Windows RT tablets—are selling even worse than the Surface line.
Brad Chacos spends the days jamming to Spotify, digging through desktop PCs and covering everything from BYOD tablets to DIY tesla coils.
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Saturday, 17 August 2013
Nokia updates Lumia smartphones with camera app, better imaging
Nokia has started rolling out the Amber software update to its Lumia smartphones, which will allow users to take better pictures and get new camera apps.
The Finnish handset maker continues to put a lot of effort into improving camera functionality and picture quality on its Windows Phone-based Lumia smartphones.
The Amber update brings improved algorithms for better noise reduction, color reproduction, exposure control and autofocus. On the Lumia 920, controls to adjust the ISO settings of the camera from 800 to 3200 allow even better low-light performance, Nokia said in a blog post on Thursday.
After installing the update, users will also be able to get the Smart Camera app, which premiered on the Lumia 925. It includes features such as Best Shot, Action Shot and Change Faces. The latter allows users to create better group pictures by choosing the best from a series of images or removing unwanted objects. Action Shot lets users combine shots of people in movement into one image.
The quality of images taken with the Smart Camera app will be affected by the performance of each phone. On the Lumia 720, 620 and 520, the burst mode used for some effects takes seven pictures rather than ten, for example.
NokiaNokia Lumia 928
In addition to the Amber update, the Pro Camera app is available for the 920, 925, and 928, Nokia said. The app's user interface has a number of sliders that lets users control camera settings such as shutter speed, exposure value, ISO settings, white balance and the manual focus. The app is also available on the 1020.
Amber isn't just about imaging; Nokia has also added a feature called Glance Screen, which adds a clock to the standby screen. It also adds indicators to show when the phone is running on a low battery or when the phone is charging or set to silent mode.
The software won't be available on the 520 and 625, because those two smartphones have a smaller display memory, according to Nokia.
Two features from older phones are also making an appearance in Amber: flipping the phone over to mute an incoming call and a double-tap on the screen to unlock the screen.
The Lumia 920 and 820 in selected countries as well as the 521, 810, and 928 in the U.S. will get the update first. Owners of the 520, 620 and 720 will have to wait a bit longer, but Nokia expects everyone will get Amber by end September.
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Nokia updates Lumia smartphones with camera app, better imaging
Nokia has started rolling out the Amber software update to its Lumia smartphones, which will allow users to take better pictures and get new camera apps.
The Finnish handset maker continues to put a lot of effort into improving camera functionality and picture quality on its Windows Phone-based Lumia smartphones.
The Amber update brings improved algorithms for better noise reduction, color reproduction, exposure control and autofocus. On the Lumia 920, controls to adjust the ISO settings of the camera from 800 to 3200 allow even better low-light performance, Nokia said in a blog post on Thursday.
After installing the update, users will also be able to get the Smart Camera app, which premiered on the Lumia 925. It includes features such as Best Shot, Action Shot and Change Faces. The latter allows users to create better group pictures by choosing the best from a series of images or removing unwanted objects. Action Shot lets users combine shots of people in movement into one image.
The quality of images taken with the Smart Camera app will be affected by the performance of each phone. On the Lumia 720, 620 and 520, the burst mode used for some effects takes seven pictures rather than ten, for example.
NokiaNokia Lumia 928
In addition to the Amber update, the Pro Camera app is available for the 920, 925, and 928, Nokia said. The app's user interface has a number of sliders that lets users control camera settings such as shutter speed, exposure value, ISO settings, white balance and the manual focus. The app is also available on the 1020.
Amber isn't just about imaging; Nokia has also added a feature called Glance Screen, which adds a clock to the standby screen. It also adds indicators to show when the phone is running on a low battery or when the phone is charging or set to silent mode.
The software won't be available on the 520 and 625, because those two smartphones have a smaller display memory, according to Nokia.
Two features from older phones are also making an appearance in Amber: flipping the phone over to mute an incoming call and a double-tap on the screen to unlock the screen.
The Lumia 920 and 820 in selected countries as well as the 521, 810, and 928 in the U.S. will get the update first. Owners of the 520, 620 and 720 will have to wait a bit longer, but Nokia expects everyone will get Amber by end September.
Follow TechHive on Tumblr today.
Thursday, 25 July 2013
Nokia Lumia 1020 (AT&T)
Pros Best camera ever on a smartphone. Excellent manual camera controls. Easy-to-use OS.Cons Big. Expensive. Slow shot-to-shot times. Windows Phone is out of the mainstream for photo apps and communities. Bottom Line The first viable 41-megapixel camera phone, the Nokia Lumia 1020 for AT&T is an impressive feat, but it's big, expensive, and doesn't run Instagram.By Jim Fisher, Sascha Segan 
The Nokia Lumia 1020 is the best camera phone on Earth. That's a given. The question here is whether that makes it a best buy—and the answer, we're afraid to say, is not quite. While the Lumia 1020 ($299-659) is an easy-to-use smartphone that takes gorgeous images, a relatively slow shot-to-shot time and the generally maverick state of Windows Phone make this fall short of being an obvious choice.
Physical Features and Call Quality
The Lumia 1020 feels like a massive slab of a phone, in the spirit of the Lumia 920. At 5.1 by 2.8 by 0.4 inches (HWD) and 5.6 ounces, it's actually lighter than Verizon's Lumia 928, and shorter than both that phone and the Samsung Galaxy S 4. The 1020 is an unusually wide phone, though, and the camera lens bump on the back tends to make it float over a table rather than sit directly on it, making it appear even thicker than it is. If you push down on the phone while it's sitting on a table, it wobbles a little like a see-saw. The phone's width made it difficult for me to use it entirely one-handed, but I have small hands.
The 1020 is clad in now-traditional Nokia matte polycarbonate, coming in black, white, or yellow. The 4.5-inch, 1,280-by-768-pixel Gorilla Glass 3 AMOLED screen has crazily oversaturated colors, and I saw a little visual color bleed when scrolling quickly back and forth. The touch screen can be used with gloves.
The 1020 is a good voice phone. It has a sharp, slightly harsh, but loud-enough earpiece and a very loud if tinny speakerphone. Noise cancellation was adequate if not total, reducing construction and traffic noise to a background hiss. Transmissions through the speakerphone had a tendency to sound a bit distant, but nothing too awful. The 1020 doesn't measure up to the Galaxy S 4 on voice quality, but it'll certainly do.
Like all Windows Phones, the 1020's voice dialing is fine, as long as you stick to dialing; I haven't had much luck with voice commands or dictation. The 1020 had no problem connecting to Jawbone or Plantronics Bluetooth headsets.
The Lumia 1020 operates on AT&T's LTE and HSPA+ networks, and roams on foreign HSPA networks. AT&T has a decent international roaming package with 100MB of data for $25. I got excellent speeds on the Ookla Speedtest.net app, with downloads often exceeding 20Mbps and uploads around 5Mbps, as befits America's fastest wireless network. Don't try to move the 1020 over to T-Mobile, though, as the phone lacks one of T-Mobile's HSPA bands.
We're still testing the sealed-in 2,000mAh battery and we'll get back to you later on that. It's the same size as the Lumia 928's battery, though; we got 9 hours and 32 minutes of talk time on that device, and with the same processor, OS, and screen size, we'd expect this one to be similar.
The phone also packs 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi on the 2.4 and 5GHz bands, NFC, and GPS, although wireless charging requires a separate, extra cover ($39.99).
Performance, OS, and Multimedia Playback
The Lumia 1020 runs Windows Phone 8 with Nokia's "Amber" updates (and plenty of other add-on Nokia and AT&T software) and the same 1.5GHz Qualcomm S4 processor that you see in the Lumia 925, 928, and for that matter a bunch of other Windows Phones as well. The phone benchmarked very similarly to those other devices. The UI is smooth and fluid, but the Internet Explorer browser doesn't render pages as quickly as the latest version of Chrome on Android superphones, according to the Browsermark browser benchmark.
Windows Phone's problem, as always, is not that it doesn't have apps, but that the apps are often different (and sometimes not as good) as the ones you find on iOS and Android. Most notably for photographers, there's no Instagram, although there's a bunch of third-party clients: Instance, Wpgram, and Metrogram. Vine and Hipstamatic are coming sometime in the vague future. Games are often just different; my daughter loves Ilo Milo and Max & the Magic Marker, both WP exclusives, but I can't play most of the Square Enix or Kemco RPGs I like on other platforms. And one major category, downloadable video stores, is just plain missing.
Nokia's major contributions are a slew of location-based and photography apps. The camera apps get a little overwhelming: There's not only Nokia Pro Camera, but Nokia Smart Camera, Cinemagraph, Panorama, PhotoBeamer, and Blink, each of which add special modes to the camera. From Nokia's mapping department comes HERE City Lens, HERE Drive+, HERE Maps, and HERE Transit. The driving and transit directions are excellent, but HERE Maps and City lens suffer badly from an out-of-date business database which turned up too many closed restaurants in my area; the search functions also aren't nearly as flexible as Google's.
The phone has 29GB of available memory and no memory card slot. Windows Phone uses a PC connector app to reformat music and video for the phone; it can handle most unprotected video formats, as well as music formats other than AIFF and WAV. Unsurprisingly, music and video sound good through wired or Bluetooth headphones, and Nokia offers a five-band equalizer if you like to tweak your sound. An FM radio works with wired headphones, and both Nokia and AT&T preload their own streaming radio apps. For video, you can go with Netflix or AT&T's own streaming video app, although there are no downloadable video options.
(Next page: Lumia 1020 Camera)
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