On Video: Nokia Lumia 1020

When Nokia first unveiled its 41MP camera phone last year, we were all hoping and praying for a Windows Phone device with this same sensor. Today, we have the Lumia 1020 WP8 device packing in that very same sensor. While Nokia did fulfill our wishes in merging a great sensor with a more relevant OS than Symbian S60, we somehow find ourselves struggling to see how this phone is worth the current price tag. Sitting pretty at close to Rs 50,000, the Lumia 1020 is competing with the Galaxy Note 3 and the soon to be launched Apple iPhone 5s. While it’s not a spec to spec sort of competition, these are the alternatives that people will consider when shopping in this segment.

The 1020 is very reminiscent of the Lumia 800 in terms of design and aesthetics. It features the same unibody, matt-finished polycarbonate shell which feels premium. The fit and finish of the buttons and other plastic bits are done really well and pushes the bar once more for premium handsets. When compared to the Lumia 925, the 1020 has double the storage and double the RAM to help in processing those massive 34MP images. However, apart from this, both handsets are pretty much identical in terms of display technology, processing power and battery. The 1020 is a bit thicker and heavier but it’s not something you’ll notice. There’s no memory card expansion either, which comes as a disappointment.

Is the 1020 every bit as good as it claims to be?

The real kicker is the pricing. With an online retail price of about Rs 48,000, the Lumia 1020 is a solid Rs 20,000 more expensive than the Lumia 925. It’s pretty obvious that Nokia is charging you this premium for the PureView camera but we don’t think it’s worth this high a premium, no matter how good the sensor might be for a phone camera. Granted, it may have one of the best camera sensors ever fitted into a phone, but it's still a smartphone at the end of the day and in that sense, WP8 is still miles behind both Android and iOS. The PureView 808 launched for around Rs 30,000 last year and we feel the 1020 should have been no more than Rs 35,000 to be even considered. We’ll be putting the Lumia 1020 through an exhaustive test and pitting it against the Lumia 925 to see how much better it really is, so stay tuned for that.

Till then, we want to know if you’d be willing to pay this sort of a premium for a camera phone or would rather settle for something like the 925 which would give you slightly lesser camera performance at almost half the price.