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The official announcement for the Nokia Lumia 1520 was made back in October, which gave me plenty of time to save up; it was clear that this and its little brother with the phenomenal camera were to be the flagship phone products, and from the feedback I had heard about the 1020, the anticipation and putting away of a few(?) quid a week was certainly worthwhile.

In fact, Nokia didn't announce the actual release date of the phone until the day it was available - the 5th of December; fortunately, I'd managed to pre-order one on unlocked-mobiles.com (only the black one was going to be available to start with) and I excitedly waited at home for it to arrive. Rumours that I left my daughter's school assembly early to make sure I didn't miss the delivery are entirely unfounded. Anyway, the grumpy Yodel man thrust a box into my outstretched arms, and my day got much better from that moment on. Although I still had to work; fortunately for my employer the phone needed to be fully charged before I could use it.

And so to the hardware. One word: phenomenal. Yes, it's big - but it is a sleek rectangle of black gorgeousness; extremely thin, with only a 1p-sized protuberance(!) for the camera lens. It has an enormous screen, which is higher resolution than the 37" telly in the lounge, an eye-blinkingly bright flash (which actually doesn't help greatly with photos.. most of my early shots involve my family squinting) and - best of all - STEREO MICROPHONES! (But more on that in a moment). The phone is fast - very, very fast. Going back to my 'next newest' device - the first generation Nexus 7, which hasn't even had its first birthday yet - the difference is clear. Menus are snappy, applications load quickly and it is a pleasure to use in that respect.

Next, then, the operating system. I wasn't really prepared for this, even though I was fortunate enough to have previously been given a very thorough overview of it by Alan (@DigitalAmoeba) - who listeners to the Big Show may remember was custodian of a Surface at this year's Bash. It is remarkably 'usable', but definitely different from both Android and iOS. To me, in fact, it makes both of those look rather dated - it has just the right combination of live information on the buttons and quick access to the main functions. My main comparator was Android, since I've occupied that ecosystem for the past few years; so far, it has been able to do pretty much everything I could do before. Except for one thing. There is no visible filesystem. And thus, no sharing of data between apps. Taking a photo and uploading it to Dropbox... grabbing an sound fiile and attaching it to an email... taking an MP4 and hiding it somewhere discreetly on the SD card.. none of this is possible. Having to run a piece of software akin to iTunes (the "Windows Phone App for Desktop") to do anything more that trivial file copies from internal and SD storage (yup.. it does have a microSD card slot.. fantastic!) is a faff. I have seen that there are campaigns to ask Microsoft to 'grow some' and actually give power users the features and flexibility they desire, but I can kind-of see where they're coming from, in that keeping it simple prevents cross-contamination and complications.

But - and that's the big but (and I cannot lie) - there is not the application support to be able to work around this. I have to say that, having been scouring the Windows Phone Store (is that the name? Didn't Nokia say they owned 'store'? Oh I don't know...) for applications that did just what I wanted - an audio recorder that could upload to dropbox... an app that could download MP3s to my library... - and, of course, the staples - Instagram, Skype, Rando, I gradually adjusted my assessment of the range of apps available – to start with it was three years.. now perhaps it’s closer to 18 months or a year behind Android. OK, so not all of the apps are all that pretty and I have to adjust my expectations a little bit (not least because Windows Phone 8 supports very little background function - a good decision in terms of memory, processor and battery usage, but somewhat restricts what can be done asynchronously), but I can log my gym workouts, monitor my phone IP cameras, log my car mileage and tune my guitar, so it's about 75-80% of what I could do on my Android phone.

That, however, is more than made up for by the on-board apps; Data Sense is a very pretty way of managing how quickly my mobile data is being eaten up - essential for limited data plans; the "HERE" navigation is easily a peer of Google Maps, and the camera... Ohh the camera. I could literally spend a whole weekend playing with all the functions that it offers - some really useful (ISO and exposure length can be manually set), and others more artistic (*cough*) - like the burst shooting that can make excellent action shots or clear out moving items from the shot. And then there's cinemagraph and colour pop.. plenty of creative toys. Nokia UK have a Twitter account that regularly showcases the best of the pictures - it's definitely worth taking a look to see what the camera and apps can do.

One aspect I haven't yet covered is the audio subsystem. The reason I had been holding out for this phone is because it boasts stereo microphones (in fact it claims to have four, for "Nokia Rich Recording" - there's a rather delightful demo video here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4_HSkGembQ that shows it off). Now, being a bit of an audio afficionado, I had high hopes for the recording capabilities of the phone - I thought that the audio on the demo was a little 'bottomy', although the camera does have an excellent feature where frequencies under either 100 or 200Hz can be cut. The recordings I've made have been very, very clean though - the processing ensures it is loud enough without too much hiss or clipping. If I were a little cynical, I would say I could hear some psychoacoustic effects at play (a little burble here and there) but for day to day recording, I would say it's pretty much ideal.

Except for one thing. I have not yet found a way simply to record audio in stereo. Nope. The only way I can do it is by recording video, and then stripping the audio out using VLC. Which means I can't lock the screen and I have to put up with uploading a massive file that generally shows either the ceiling or the backs of people ahead of me. I will buy at least two pints for whoever finds (or codes!) a way to do this, since it is pretty much (apart from the OS restrictions I mentioned above) the only thing that has frustrated me since I've had the phone. And yes, I have been through all the apps, and even looked at the Windows Phone 8 developer pages. For a very, very short time.

However, every day of the four days I've had this phone, there has been more to love about it than to get frustrated about. I love the way that, if the phone's connected to a headset or to the car by bluetooth and a text arrives, it reads it out and asks what I want to do with it. I love the way I can have a special live tile of my wife on the front of the phone, so I can quickly send her a message, or catch up with what she's posted on Twitter and Facebook - it's always good to arrive home well-informed! I love that I haven't even explored Local Scout, Microsoft Office or XBox games yet. This phone is definitely going to keep me occupied for the next little while. Fortunately it easily lasts a day without needing to be charged. I would say this is definitely the best phone I've ever owned - and arguably one of the best one could buy at the present time.

Oh, and it's not even the largest - while looking round a phone shop for a case for it (Nokia still haven't started selling the official ones, yet - what's with that?) I noticed that the Sony Xperia Z Ultra is even bigger, with a 6.4" screen. But I'll definitely be sticking with the Nokia 1520 for a while to come.

James Hart

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Ewen Rankin

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