Some people may have read some of my experience involving the Microsoft Store online preorders. It was terrible... no information, slow updates, and they STILL haven't shipped yet. So, I ended up driving up to the Beachwood Mall store in Cleveland, OH (about an hour away from me in Youngstown). It was a great experience, and I ended up getting a free camera grip, $50 gift card for a 2 year contract + $10 WP Store gift card, and $25 Bing Challenge gift card... so $75 towards any future purchase!
As for the Lumia 1020 itself, well, it's spectacular and not just for the obvious benefit of the camera (which yes, really is awesome). In fact, the biggest benefits I've found so far are FIXES for the Lumia 920 glitches I've experienced since launch.
When I first upgraded to the Lumia 920 (from the HTC Titan), I lost the ability to listen to my work Exchange server's voicemail attachments (standard WAV audio files). This has infuriated me to no end for nearly a year, but to be clear it was a WP8 bug. The Lumia 1020 fixes this, so I'm assuming it's part of the GDR2 update. Another audio-related issue was that while on a call, notification alerts would trigger a trio of email alert tones followed by the actual alert tone that was coming in. It was very distracting when on a call, and this is definitely fixed in GDR2 as well. HALLELUJAH!!
As far as actual 920 to 1020 improvements, well... SPEAKER and CALL QUALITY improvements! Big time! I often struggled to hear on the 920... volume was NEVER loud enough on ear piece or speaker phone. Also, I frequently had people telling me they couldn't hear me or that I was cutting out. Both of those issues are definitely resolved. In fact, when I call my work voicemail system, I can hear messages loud and clear, and it never misses my voice commands. So the bottom line... FINALLY-- a smartphone that's an excellent, intelligent PHONE!
Other hardware aspects that stand out... the camera and display are both obvious and plenty has been said about them, so I'm not going to elaborate on them too much. The camera hump is really not that bad. Pictures don't do it justice, because it's very subtle in reality. In fact, if you put a wireless charging shell on this phone, it's only barely thicker than the 920 (~1mm). The phone itself is crazy thin and light and while some may find the hump awkward, I really don't think so. My index finger naturally curves over it the way I naturally hold the phone, so it's actually nice to hold. As for the display, well, I personally enjoy it. I really like the color depth of AMOLED. It's much better than the LCD. However, when scrolling through I do notice some blurring, so (IMO) the PureMotion display isn't quite up to snuff as on the LCD version. That said, it's not terrible, and I
only notice it when scrolling through text. I've not seen any blurring on videos or game graphics. The ability to adjust display saturation is a welcome improvement too for those who like more natural or more saturated tones.
Glance is a really neat feature. I'm surprised by how much I like it. I've set it to Peek mode. Interestingly though, it's double-tap that I love the most. I don't know why, but it
feels easier to double-tap and swipe up to bring my phone back to life. Power buttons are so... quaint, lol. Actually, it kinda makes me wish there was a way to bring up music controls on the lockscreen without pressing the volume keys.
Honestly, if there's one hardware attribute of the 1020 that I'm not fond of... it's the vibration. I keep my phone on vibrate most of the time so that my constant barrage of email notifications don't annoy people around me. Unfortunately, the strength of the vibrations is very light, and I don't hear it or feel it as well as I'd like. It's actually weaker than the already lame 920 vibration.
So here's the bottom line... if you're on the fence about this phone, here's my advice. If you have a 92X device, upgrade ONLY if you really want/need the extra camera depth, otherwise look forward to the GDR2/Amber update which will bring you all of the software improvements. If you're on any other device, you can pick any device in the 900/1000 series and be VERY happy with it, but the 1020 is the new standard until we see a 900-series refresh.
(On a side note, I don't expect the 900-series refresh to happen until spring with the WP 8.1 release. With the introduction of 928 and 925 very recently, Nokia won't want to revise those for at least 6 months. With the introduction of the 1020, the 920 refresh isn't necessary as soon. I have been speculating that Nokia may use this 1020 exclusive to their advantage to launch a 930 model in spring on ALL carriers. Pure conjecture though.)