Hitechnex: Windows Phone

Samsung Windows Phone, “Huron” confirmed for Verizon

Aditya 0 Gadgets, Samsung, Smartphone, Technology, Windows Phone 8.2.14

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Looks like the FCC spilled the beans on the Samsung Huron. The Verizon bound Windows Phone's model number is SM-W750V, and it will carry Verizon's LTE bands. This means that the phone will most likely be released soon.</div>
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The FCC report doesn't detail much about the phone, save that it will have dual-band WiFi, Global 3G antennas, Bluetooth, and NFC.</div>
<img height="395" src="http://cdn.gsmarena.com/vv/newsimg/14/02/samsung-huron-fcc/gsmarena_001.jpg" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-seirf; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-seirf; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;" /><br />
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Evleaks released some information regarding the aesthetics of the device: expect the Huron to look like a Galaxy S4. It's safe to assume that a lot of the same hardware features on the S4 will make an appearance on the Huron as well: 2GB RAM, 13MP primary camera, Quad-Core CPU, and a 5” 1080x1920 display.</div>
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The Huron will certainly be filling a niche in Verizon's Windows Phone roster. Big Red has WP handsets, but nothing that can really be considered high-end, or anywhere near the level that the Huron is promising.</div>
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The only phone on Verizon's network that can contend with the Huron in specs will be the upcoming Nokia ICON 929; with its 20MP Pureview camera and 5-inch 1080p display, Windows Phone loving Verizon customers will have some pretty interesting choices lined up in the near future.</div>
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Any Verizon customers here excited for the Huron?</div>
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Samsung Windows Phone, “Huron” confirmed for Verizon

Looks like the FCC spilled the beans on the Samsung Huron. The Verizon bound Windows Phone's model number is SM-W750V, and it will car...

Beats Music review

Hitechnex 0 Android, App, Beats Music, Reviews, Windows Phone 1.2.14

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There's no shortage of music subscription services that offer unlimited streaming for a monthly fee. The conceit of the latest offering, Beats Music, is that its playlists and other recommendations are curated by warm-blooded humans, not robots.<div style="outline: none;">
As CEO Ian Rogers proclaims, "Algorithms can do 'sounds like.' They can't do 'feels like.'"</div>
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<span style="color: #4e4e4e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Beats Music comes from Beats Electronics, the headphone-maker backed by hip-hop mogul Dr. Dre and former music executive Jimmy Iovine.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4e4e4e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">For $10 a month, you get unlimited streaming and song downloading for offline listening. Downloaded songs expire once you cancel the subscription. AT&T customers are also eligible for a $15-a-month family plan for as many as five family members. You can sign up for a 90-day free trial, but there's no free, ad-supported version like some of its rivals.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4e4e4e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Beats Music has its roots in the MOG streaming service, which Beats Electronics bought in 2012. Beats Music has a more playful interface than MOG, which was mostly utilitarian. Beats also introduces a few ways to discover both new and old material.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4e4e4e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Apps Android, iOS, and Windows Phone are available now. Computer users can listen through their Web browser. And like other streaming services, you can choose specific songs, albums or artists on your own. Beats Music has a catalog of more than 20 million songs, which is comparable to its rivals.</span></span></div>
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I began by going through a get-to-know-you sequence for new users, picking a few genres and artists I like. Somewhat flustered by the scarcity of choices, I picked "Sting," "Katy Perry" and "Harry Connick Jr." and the genre "Pop." I'm glad I was discerning about these choices (redoing them several times), because eventually I was presented with something I liked.</div>
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The Beats Music app tries to take the information you enter in order to present you with a variety of albums and playlists that are "Just For You."</div>
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Another section for recommendations, dubbed "The Sentence," prompts you to fill in blanks to establish what you'd like to hear, but you end up with silly sentences like "I'm in the shower & feel like ordering in with my family to Indie." It's reminiscent of Allrecipes' "Dinner Spinner" except I'm not sure what ingredients I'm adding in. I mostly skipped this game because I found the resulting choices to be far too random.</div>
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Another "Highlights" section made more sense, like a playlist of the "2014 Grammy Winners."</div>
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One recommendation I liked from the "Just For You" section was a playlist called "Young Lovers Heartbreak Mix." If you have a rainy day - or in drought-plagued Los Angeles, at least a few hours with nothing better to do - it's worth a listen.</div>
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The 25-song, 96-minute playlist starts off slowly with the piano ballad "Say Something" by A Great Big World. It builds gradually, ramping up with the rise-from-the-ashes fourth song "Skyscraper" by Demi Lovato. It hits a crescendo between songs 13 and 14, when "Don't Speak," Gwen Stefani's 1996 hit with her band, No Doubt, crashes into Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball" from last year. Somewhat appropriately, the playlist ends with Taylor Swift's power recovery song "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together."</div>
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The app says the playlist was created by "Beats Pop," but the curator was actually Arjan Timmermans, the popular blogger behind ArjanWrites.com. Hired as the head of pop and dance programming at Beats Music last year, Timmermans is one of nine real people who put some 5,000 playlists together for Beats Music. (Neither Dre nor Iovine are among them).</div>
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The playlist was designed for "a teenager who got their heart broken for the first time," Timmermans said in an interview. The songs - a mix of hits by current teen idols and breakup classics like "Don't Speak" - are meant to work together emotionally, he said, telling the listener, "It's OK to be sad, but I can move through this."</div>
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The playlist has a beginning, middle and an end and runs about as long as a movie. And I found that some songs' lyrics work together back-to-back, like the way Stefani's line "don't tell me cause it hurts" runs into Cyrus' "don't you ever say I just walked away, I will always want you."</div>
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That's a link I don't see a machine making these days. For people, it's probably a subconscious connection buried deep down there somewhere.</div>
<span style="color: #4e4e4e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">I am no teenager anymore, am happily married and am not the playlist's presumptive audience. But as a sampling of what Beats Music has to offer, it shows me this app has a soul.</span></div>

Beats Music review

There's no shortage of music subscription services that offer unlimited streaming for a monthly fee. The conceit of the latest off...

HTC Windows Phone 8X Review

Hitechnex 0 Gadgets, HTC, HTC 8X, Microsoft, Smartphone, Technology, Windows 8, Windows Phone 6.1.14

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<span class="dropc" style="float: left; font-family: arial; font-size: 58px; line-height: 51px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 3px 2px 0px;">W</span>indows Phone 8 may not be the most popular OS of choice at the moment but that hasn’t stopped OEMs from delivering truly great hardware. HTC’s flagship Windows Phone 8 device, the 8X, hit online stores well before Nokia launched the Lumia series. The 8X exudes style and elegance and is targeted at fashionable youngsters. However, does the 8X have something more to offer for the power users or is it merely a fashion accessory? Let’s find out.</div>
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<br style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><strong style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Design and Build </strong><br style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;" />The HTC 8X features one of the best smartphone designs we’ve come across in a long time. The blend of rubberized polycarbonate and glass gives the phone a premium look and feel and the bright, vivid colour options beg a second look. Sadly, we only get the blue and black trims here in India. The 4.3-inch, Super LCD 2 display takes center stage in the front with a row of capacitive buttons along the bottom. The volume rocker and power button sit flush with the side panel and while this gives the phone a very clean look, it’s not the easiest to use. Like all WP8 handsets, the 8X also features a dedicated camera shutter button.</div>
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<a href="http://im.tech2.in.com/gallery/2013/feb/htc_8x_1_041520014757.jpg" style="color: #0099cc; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="A handsome looker" src="http://im.tech2.in.com/gallery/2013/feb/htc_8x_1_041520014757_640x360.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="620" /></a></div>
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Around the back, we have the 8MP shooter along with an LED flash and the speaker grill, placed at the bottom. The 8X also features Beats Audio enhancement for music and video playback over headphones. In terms of ergonomics, the 8X is miles ahead of its nearest WP8 competitor. With a thickness of about 10.1mm and weight of 130g, the phone feels very comfortable in your hand as well as pocket. Due to the moderately large screen size, the entire screen is within your thumbs' reach.</div>
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<br style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><strong style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Features </strong><strong style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Interface </strong><br style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;" />This display is protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 2 so it can take a fair bit of abuse before scratches start to appear. The HD resolution on a display of this size means you get a whopping 341ppi, which is great for web browsing or catching up on HD flicks. Sunlight legibility is also good allowing you to easily read the display outdoors. HTC has bundled some of their own apps like Flashlight, HTC Hub, etc. that we’ve seen on their Android offerings. Apart from this, it’s pretty much all stock Windows Phone 8 and unlike Nokia, HTC doesn’t seem to have bothered much with any exclusive apps for the platform.</div>
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Apart from a slight stutter that creeps in every now and then, the UI is quick and fluid. The display is bright and sharp and manages to produce vivid colours. The handset is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC with a dual-core Krait CPU and Adreno 225 for graphics. This, coupled with 1GB RAM, makes quite a potent combination for any type of app you throw at it.</div>
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<br style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><strong style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Media </strong><br style="margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Audio quality is surprisingly good with Beats Audio. The stock music player does a good job of sorting out your music library and you have the option to browse through music and videos in the store as well. Beats Audio is only activated with headphones plugged in.</div>
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There’s 1080p video playback support for MP4 files. There’s only 16GB of onboard storage, which is quite low considering this a flagship device. It wouldn’t have been this bad if we could expand the storage but sadly, HTC has left out that option.</div>
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HTC Windows Phone 8X Review

W indows Phone 8 may not be the most popular OS of choice at the moment but that hasn’t stopped OEMs from delivering truly great hardware....

HTC 8X Review

Hitechnex 0 Gadgets, HTC, HTC 8X, Microsoft, Reviews, Smartphone, Technology, Windows 8, Windows Phone 6.1.14

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A splash of colour, Microsoft's latest mobile platform and a sleek new body are combined with more powerful hardware - is the 8X the phone to bring Windows Phone 8 to the masses?</div>
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HTC's been in a bit of a weird position these last few years. From the days of anonymity when it made Windows phones for others, it rode the crest of the Android wave when Google's platform launched becoming, pretty much, <em>the</em>Android handset OEM of choice.</div>
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And then Samsung happened. HTC's offerings appeared to dip and even the pretty fantastic One X – struggled to make inroads against the seemingly unstoppable Galaxy line, currently led by the superb Galaxy S3.</div>
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HTC was up there at the starting block when Microsoft launched Windows Phone a couple of years back, and although it's competing with Samsung in this arena too – and its offerings haven't been what one would call "amazing" – HTC is clearly trying to make its voice heard.</div>
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And what better way to do that with some pretty bright colours and a newer version of Windows Phone that the world's been waiting for for months?</div>
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The HTC 8X comes in a range of colours - from muted black, to respectable red, to an elegant purple and a, quite frankly, hideous lollipop-lady yellow hue.</div>
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We were sent the purple model and it's a beauty. There had been rumours that the red would be reserved for Verizon users in the US – but it looks like the rest of world is now getting it too.</div>
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First thing we noticed is how thin the HTC 8X is. Not so much an amazing feat of engineering, but a clever trick.</div>
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With dimensions of 132.4 x 66.2 x 10.1mm, the HTC 8X is fairly average in size. But it's thinner round the edges to give the impression it's more svelte than it actually is. Not that this matters because it looks and feels thin most of the time and the slight curve around the back means it sits well, both on a surface and in the hand.</div>
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In fact, in the hand, it looks the same size as the HTC One X, despite the appearance given in our picture above.</div>
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Add to that the material the HTC 8X is made of – polycarbonate, like the One X – and you instantly have in your mitts a handset that feels like a real premium device. It's a unibody design so it's all nice and neat (win) but at the expense of a memory slot and replaceable battery (fail).</div>
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The front of the HTC 8X is taken up by the display. If you like what Nokia did with the Lumia 800, or indeed what HTC did with the One X, you'll be a fan of this too.</div>
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The screen just looks like it's been stuck on top of the phone and adds to that premium feel. There's also a splash of colour around the earpiece to remind you that the two are linked.</div>
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Next to this, you'll find the front-facing wide-angled camera, and the three Windows Phone softkeys at the bottom – back, search and menu.</div>
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That screen is an HD display at 720x1280. Spread over 4.3 inches, it's easily as sharp as Apple's retina display, which no longer appears to be anything special by modern standards.</div>
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The top of the HTC 8X is fairly minimalist with nothing other than the 3.5mm headphone jack and the lock button. Although we're not necessarily fans of lock buttons on top of larger phones due to the awkwardness they present, here, we weren't too fussed.</div>
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Due to the shape of the handset and the way it sits, it's easy enough to press with the index finger whether you're a left or right hander. Our only complaint is it is quite subtle and a few times, we had to feel around to find it if we were looking elsewhere. It doesn't stick out much.</div>
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The left hand side of the HTC 8X is completely bare, whilst all you'll find down at the bottom is the micro USB charging and syncing port.</div>
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The volume rocker is on the right and below it is a camera shutter key. We are always pleased to see these because it makes the art of launching the camera and taking a photo so much easier than messing about with software, no matter how good said software is.</div>
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There's also a tray for getting that micro SIM in – but you'll need to use a special tool to open it so make sure you keep it in a safe place.</div>
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The rear of the HTC 8X is a thing of beauty. That polycarbonate body really sets it off – as does the colour which sits beneath a silver HTC logo and another displaying the Beats Audio heritage. And of course, there's that main snapper with LED light which HTC promises will deliver amazing results.</div>
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The 8X will be pitching itself right against Nokia's latest Lumia range – and with the Lumia 920 also coming in a number of colourful iterations, telling them apart may be harder for those who aren't as used to Windows Phone products.</div>
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But there is a difference in that the HTC 8X doesn't come with 4G LTE connectivity in the UK, whilst the Lumia 920 does. Which means it'll likely be cheaper – and that may be its saving grace for late adopters.</div>
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HTC 8X Review

A splash of colour, Microsoft's latest mobile platform and a sleek new body are combined with more powerful hardware - is the 8X the p...

Nokia Lumia 1520 review: Small step into big boys' club

Hitechnex 0 Gadgets, Lumia, Nokia, Nokia Lumia 1520, Reviews, Smartphone, Technology, Windows Phone 6.1.14

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The phablet (big screen phones) segment has mostly been dominated by Android, with Samsung ruling the roost thanks to its Note devices. Even Chinese players like Huawei and Indian brands have tried to capitalize on the new trend. Finnish handset maker Nokia finally seems to have realized late it had missed out on the frenzy. The result is its latest Lumia smartphone, the Lumia 1520.<br />
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The Nokia Lumia 1520 not only features a 6-inch screen, it is also the first Windows Phone 8 device to sport a full-HD display and house a quad-core processor. Interestingly, it is the first device that runs Windows Phone 8 GDR 3 or Black (Nokia's build of the OS), the latest iteration of the mobile operating system. Does the Lumia 1520 have the potential to challenge the Android phablets out there? We try to find out, in our review.<br />
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Build and design - Nokia's biggest phone ever</div>
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At first glance, the Nokia Lumia 1520 looks like a big shiny slab of glass contoured by a colourful frame. Joining the league of the Sony Xperia Z Ultra and the HTC One Max, the phone is certainly one of the largest available in the market at the moment. </div>
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The Lumia 1520 sports a quality polycarbonate chasis. We got a yellow coloured phone as our review unit. It is safe to say that the premium polycarbonate used in the phone's body is accentuated by the phone's matte finish. </div>
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The phone's edges are rounded but the corners are not curved, making the shell look more rectangular, giving the phone a sharp look. </div>
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The front of the phone is dominated by its 6-inch full-HD ClearBlack IPS LCD panel. The display panel bevels at the edges. Nokia has deployed Gorilla Glass 2 to protect the display against scratches. The three capacitive touch buttons for Back, Start and Search are placed below the display. </div>
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Similar to other phones in the Lumia range, the right edge of the phone has three hardware buttons, namely the volume rocker, the power key and the camera shutter key. Thanks to this placement, it is easy to access the power button. All the keys offer good tactile feedback. </div>
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The left edge features compartments for the nano-sim and the microSD card. The cards can be placed with the help of trays that can be ejected with the help of a sharp object or the tool that comes with the phone. </div>
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It is important to know that the Lumia 1520 is the first Nokia phone and one of the very few phones (the iPhone 5, 5S and 5C being the other ones) to use a nano-sim. At this point, getting a nano-sim is more of a hassle, especially for people who swap their phones frequently. </div>
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The micro-USB port is located at the bottom edge while the 3.5mm headset jack sits at the top. </div>
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The back of the phone looks similar to that of the Lumia 925, with the big 20MP camera lens slightly protruding out, and the dual-LED flash located right above it. You'll also see some minimalist Nokia branding and a speaker grill at the back. The Lumia 1520 features four microphones, two at the front and two at the back. </div>
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The Lumia 1520 variant sold in India comes with wireless charging compatible with Qi standard compliant chargers. </div>
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We feel that the phone is well built and exudes a feeling of durability. However, its unusually large form factor definitely hinders portability. The phone doesn't fit in the average trouser pocket and is difficult to lug around. It is also not very comfortable to hold, especially if you're on a long duration call, or use the phone a lot for voice. </div>
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While the device is better for use as a phone compared to 7-inch tablets with voice calling, it still doesn't fit the bill when it comes to ergonomics. What makes it worse is that Nokia hasn't optimized it for one hand usage.</div>
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Display - The first full-HD Windows Phone device</div>
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The Nokia Lumia 1520 features a 6-inch full-HD (1080 x 1920p) ClearBlack IPS LCD panel with a pixel density of 368ppi and Gorilla Glass 2 protection. The phone's display offers sharp and crisp text and graphics, along with superior viewing angles. We found the screen to be less reflective and outdoor legibility was excellent. We did find brightness levels to be less than acceptable even after setting the brightness to automatic. </div>
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Nokia offers special settings for tweaking the display's colour profile with options to set saturation and temperature levels according to your own preference. </div>
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The touch panel on the display is extremely sensitive and can work even with gloves on. At times, we felt that this lead to accidental touches, especially while scrolling through social feeds or a webpage littered with links, due to the big screen. </div>
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We feel that it is crucial for a big screen phone to sport a high quality display, as it is one of its key selling points, and the Lumia 1520's display scores well in this department. </div>
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Software - Black is an incremental update The Lumia 1520 runs Windows Phone 8's GDR 3 build, the latest iteration of the OS. Nokia calls it Black, adding its own software enhancements. The build brings support for full-HD (1080p) displays and quad-core processors. </div>
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There are not many significant changes in terms of the user interface and functionality, compared to the Amber build (GDR2) of the OS. For a full review of the Windows Phone OS, read our Nokia Lumia 1020 review. </div>
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The new build includes a Driving Mode that lets you limit the notifications and alerts displayed on the home screen, whenever the handset is paired with Bluetooth devices. </div>
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The other major (and much demanded) change is the ability to lock the screen rotation but the only way to toggle it is through the phone's Settings. Also, the Start screen doesn't offer a landscape mode. </div>
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Multitasking is also better in the GDR3 as you can close apps from the task switcher through a Close App button. </div>
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The Black build also allows you to disable 'Glance' when the phone is charging and allows you to change the colour of the glance notifications to green and blue in Night mode. The Glance screen was introduced with the Amber update and allowed the phone's screen to display the time, battery condition and vibrate mode indicator while the phone's screen is locked, without the battery taking a hit. </div>
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Interestingly, the Black update adds support for new glance notifications including notifications for missed calls, messages, emails and even other apps such as WhatsApp. The update is definitely in the right direction. </div>
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The OS also adds support for Bluetooth 4 Low Energy mode bringing in compatibility with smartwatches and fitness bands. It also offers an enhanced sunlight readability mode altering the shade of black under sunlight to increase screen legibility. </div>
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What leaves us disappointed is that Nokia and Microsoft haven't optimized the OS to take full advantage of the increased screen real estate which is ironical. For instance, the email app and Internet Explorer browser just display two to three lines of additional text in email and web pages. A lot of space is wasted in increasing the size of UI elements like menu bars and buttons. </div>
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Even the keyboard is bigger but there's no option to align it at the right or left hand sides of the screen, making one hand typing cumbersome. Similarly we would have loved if the email client would offer previews for messages in landscape mode. </div>
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However, the Start screen can now fit more tiles and all the apps scale well on the big 1080p screen of the Lumia 1520. Nokia has included its own apps, including the reliable HERE Drive+ and HERE Maps, Nokia Mix Radio (erstwhile Nokia Music), Nokia StoryTeller(for grouping photos based on location, people tagged and time) and PhotoBeamer for sharing photos. </div>
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The Nokia Lumia 1520 will also come preloaded with productivity apps like InNote and CamScanner, digital magazine Zinio and Flipkart eBooks, gaming and fitness apps like Rail Rush and Adidas miCoach, imaging apps like Camera 360 and movies apps Your Movies, Big Flix and Vimeo. Depending on whether you love or loath pre-loaded apps, this can be a double-edged sword. </div>
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More third party apps and games are now available for Windows Phone 8, but it still pales in comparison to the app selection offered by Android and iOS. We are looking forward to the Windows Phone 8.1 update that will fill more gaps and hopefully add a centralized notifications destination. </div>
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Camera - PureView for the win!</div>
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The Nokia Lumia 1520 features a 20MP PureView camera with a 1/ 2.5" sensor and Zeiss lens. It features optical image stabilization and just like the Lumia 1020, employs oversampling. Nokia's Camera app allows you to take pictures in 5MP and 16MP (16:9)/ 19MP(4:3) resolutions simultaneously, with lossless zoom. This allows the camera to get more detail from multiple pixels and get a good quality lower resolution image. Alternatively, you can also choose to just shoot in 5MP.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSC6WLjqw0alsZxHYMI16YiRgy_T01Levp8q6XB13iOMFi3Lu9Edyrbeju2hd-Ov7Bz8XYdkpIMtkMbGhmbjUqigoeq6J4aRtPOBO3B1trTMx9ABantlEfL1qf970TZKfklLB7zuNUZTo/s1600/28469163.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSC6WLjqw0alsZxHYMI16YiRgy_T01Levp8q6XB13iOMFi3Lu9Edyrbeju2hd-Ov7Bz8XYdkpIMtkMbGhmbjUqigoeq6J4aRtPOBO3B1trTMx9ABantlEfL1qf970TZKfklLB7zuNUZTo/s1600/28469163.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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For the first time, the phone's camera also lets you shoot in RAW as it takes 16MP DNG (digital negatives) files that contain all information, and can be used for advanced processing in professional photo editing apps. </div>
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While the Lumia 1520 features a smaller sensor in terms of Megapixels it still offers one of the best results, second only to the Lumia 1020, Nokia's camera flagship. The quality of images captured outdoors, in daylight was excellent with good level of detail, accurate colour reproduction, little or no noise and good contrast. </div>
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Low-light shots also came out well, though these had much more noise, especially under 100% zoom. The phone features a dual-LED flash which is one of the best we've seen. </div>
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The phone offers video recording in 1080p and 720p resolution at 24, 25 and 30fps for each, allowing more creative use of the camera. It also offers an Audio bass filter and Directional stereo offering rich sound quality in videos. The phone also includes Optical Image Stabilization which eliminates shake. The Lumia 1520 takes excellent videos. </div>
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The phone features Nokia's new Camera app that also integrates Nokia Smart Cam functionality. The Smart Cam mode lets you capture a sequence of 10 photos and select the best one among them or combine all the pictures into one, choosing between different effects. The effects offered include Motion Focus that creates an illusion of motion, Action Shot that lets you show action by adding a strobe effect. You can also select the best faces in-group photos and even remove moving objects.</div>
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Performance - Beast of a Lumia</div>
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The Nokia Lumia 1520 is powered by a 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM and Adreno 330 GPU. It is undoubtedly the most powerful Windows Phone device available at the moment. While Windows Phone is not a very resource hungry operating system, the powerful hardware of the phone helps when you're playing graphics intensive games like Asphalt 8 or running multiple apps in the background. </div>
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We also noticed that the camera takes less time to process images (even the RAW ones) compared to the huge time taken by the Lumia 1020. We're not sure if there are enough apps available on the platform (other than games) that can utilize the powerful hardware on the phone. But then, that comes across as a weakness of the platform rather than that of the phone. The high-end hardware does make the phone a little more future-proof. </div>
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The Lumia 1520 comes with 32GB internal storage that can be expanded with the help of a microSD card (supports cards of up to 64GB). External storage support is a big plus compared to earlier Lumia devices. </div>
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Coming to battery life, the 3400mAh giant battery of the phone helps in achieving a respectable backup. With the phone's brightness set to automatic and intermittent use of WiFi and 3G, the phone lasted more than a day with usage comprising few hours of phone calls, casual gaming, an hour or two of web browsing and accessing Twitter and Facebook, in addition to clicking a few pictures.</div>
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We did not encounter any issues with the network reception and call quality was good, most of the times. </div>
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Verdict - A pricey affair</div>
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The Lumia 1520 is an excellent multimedia device. Watching videos, reading ebooks and magazines and browsing pictures made for a joyful experience on it. However, we see it more as a portable mini-tablet than an easy-to-carry big-screen phone. This is not just true for the Lumia 1520 but for all 5.5inch+ devices. But Lumia 1520 takes the problem farther. </div>
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Also, unlike Samsung, which offers a good use case, equipping its Note devices with the S-Pen stylus, we don't see Nokia adding additional value to the device. The software could also do with some tweaks and more customized apps suited to take advantage of the big screen.</div>
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At a price point of nearly Rs 47,000, we feel that the Lumia 1520 is an expensive, over-priced proposition. </div>
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We'd recommend waiting for a price cut if you want to buy it. Alternatively, if you're only looking at a phone-tablet hybrid and are open to an Android device, we'd recommend picking up the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 instead.</div>
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