The Nokia Lumia 1020 is a great camera, with an OK phone

The Nokia Lumia 1020’s 41 megapixel camera is, simply put, a beast. It sets the smartphone apart from its contemporaries, with the gap made wider still by its excellent colour reproduction, exceptional low-light shooting and digital zoom performance. Nokia’s hardware and software allows photographers to capture more detailed images, zoom, crop and cut photos that feature greater clarity and detail than what most smartphone currently cameras are capable of.

As for what the rest of the Lumia 1020 offers users? Well, that’s another story.

Available to Rogers and Telus cellular customers, the Lumia 1020 with its matte finish and 10.4 mm x 130.4 mm x 71.4 mm size, feels and looks like any number of other monolithic Android or Windows Phone 8 handsets on the market today, save the camera lens and flash assembly jutting out of the back of the handset. Unless you have large hands or long fingers, this protrusion likely won’t get in the way while you’re holding it. Unfortunately, unless you have large hands or long fingers, you also won’t be able to reach the top of the Lumia 1020’s 4.5-inch 1280 x 768 display. But the same follows for a lot of handsets these days. While the phone is well built and feels solid to the touch, it doesn’t offer the same confidence-inspiring heft offered by premium handsets like the iPhone 5s or the HTC One M8. In short, the handset feels… adequate. You likely won’t destroy it through the casual abuse most of us heap on our smartphones during the course of a two-year cellular contract. But there are other handsets out there that are a whole lot more hardy.

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