Well I am a longtime Samsung fan, been on with their phones for years and just jumped from the Galaxy series to finally try Nokia again.
I always looked at Nokia for the camera, it was the one to beat and yet the specs for the phones were always a year or more behind, so after seeing this one with upto date specs, great build and screen...and that talked about camera, I thought great, its all I want.
Build wise its great, bit slippy without a case but thinner than I thought, and yes its big......but it should be (laugh at reviews that say its big....."really ya think so")
Screen is great, nice to view and all looks great while using it.
Battery for me is good to great, I can sit and mess about with it and not feel I must charge it or it will not last the next day.
Layout is different (been with android) in a good way and bad way, its more, well adult, some nice touches but also some "wtf where are my toggles, why do I have to go into the settings for this and that" true you can get some apps to help this but there is much missing that makes life easy that has yet to make its way to a windows phone.
Apps are lacking in a big way, yes it will grow but they need help, I mean some are 10/10 but very rare, even ones make by microsoft are poor, if they cannot get it right how will other people, they are needing apps to help get around flash files and other things.
Games are way behind, this could be down to money to be made on a smaller platform and the fact that this is the first phone that can really run the big games full on, so maybe this will bring about bigger newer games.
Music is good, though the player that comes with it has no jump to part of track option, also is it just me? but if I change the volume of a song that also changes the volume of the phone itself, this means if I play a song low I will change the ringer to low....and miss a call, with android you can set and lock sound for each thing ringer/music/alerts/alarms/messages.
Ok my two issues with the phone.
1st Screen picks up a swipe as a tap, this I hope is a simple software fix.
2nd, well I missed camera out of review as it was a big hope for me and as it is a big let down, this is because the photos in daylight are good to great, better than my SGS4, and the same in low light if you use the flash, without the flash my SGS4 beats the 1520 no problem (1520 dark and full of noise)
Now comes the worst part, you see in daylight its close between the SGS4, I find the sound is better with the 1520, and its steady, the focus is also faster....but the detail is not as good as the SGS4, and this gets even worse in low light, my SGS4 walks all over the 1520, this is because as soon as the 1520 has to do low light videos the screen fills with noise, the picture is just plain bad (looks like a phone from a few year back) this again I hope is a software issue and can be optimised SOON!!!!
The phone is great, yes I love it, no its not perfect (fix the issues and it will be close, dont fix the issues and I am off back to Samsung lol) it lacks some of the ease of use, and yes you will have to find some apps to work around some limitations, but if you want a powerful phone/amazing screen for media/great battery life/promising camera once fixed/expandable memory, then this is the phone for you.
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