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22nd Oct 2013

Nokia enters the phablet game with the Lumia 1520

With a huge display, an impressive camera and Windows mobile, the Nokia Lumia 1520 looks like a pretty interesting piece of kit

JOE

With a huge display, an impressive camera and Windows mobile, the Nokia Lumia 1520 looks like a pretty interesting piece of kit

The first ‘phablet’ for a Windows phone has arrived with the six inch Nokia 1520, which was announced yesterday evening.

The ‘live tiles’ that you may recognise from Windows 8 are also present on the mobile OS and with the large screen available here with the 1520, there is now extra space for a few more with a third row of them on the display. This might give users a different and more enjoyable experience of Windows mobile on a huge screen, but it certainly won’t be fitting in anyone’s pocket. The Xperia Z Ultra was a similar size when we got our hands on it recently and while it is big, it’s a great multimedia device. If the two are anything alike, we can also expect some more accessories and smaller devices (think wearable tech) down the line to make this easier to interact with when on the move.

nokia 1520 body

Whether that makes a huge difference to the usefulness of this device or not will be difficult to tell without a hands on, but with a quad-core 2.2GHz Snapdragon 800 processor (with 2GB of RAM) it’s going to be pretty quick and allow for a good bit of multi-tasking.

The camera will also be quality, as while it’s not as powerful as the 41 MP 1020, it’s still a cut above a lot of the competition at 20MP. Recently we had the Sony Xperia Z1 for trial, which also has a 20MP sensor, and the pictures we took were noticeably much better.

The image itself can still be shared though, as the 1520 produces a low-res copy of it for more practical uses and sharing, and the 20MP version is stored for your use later on if you need it. It has four separate microphones which can capture audio, and it captures video at 1080p at 30fps, so you can expect that the quality of video you can get will be decent. Nokia claims the battery life will be good too, with it being capable of around 11 hours of video playback.

They also announced the 1320 which has a few specs pared down for the consumer who wants a phablet but not the price tag of the higher end 1520. Its display is 1280 x 720, and it has only a 5MP camera, but still measures in at about six inches, the same as its more powerful cousin.

One thing we certainly think Nokia need to do is start changing the name of their devices to something a bit more snappy anyway. We all liked the 3210, but it’s time to stop with the numbers lads, use your words.

Hat tip to the lads at Mashable for the images

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