Throwback: Nokia Lumia 1020 (Premium)

The Nokia Lumia 1020 changed everything when it arrived in July 2013, three years after Microsoft first launched its Windows phone platform. Nokia had had some excellent near misses, including the Lumia 800, 900, and 920 series, but then it finally delivered with the Lumia 1020 and its amazing 41-megapixel camera. After some initial tests confirmed its quality, my family headed off to Amsterdam for our home swap, and I hoped to use the Lumia 1020, and not a digital camera, for our photos during the trip. It worked---I never needed the standalone camera---setting the stage for what is now normal, using a smartphone camera for everything.

Over time, of course, the Lumia 1020’s blemishes became more problematic. The handset was slow, and having to wait for it to take photos quickly grew monotonous. Later smartphones, like Lumia 1520, which arrived within a few months, nearly matched the Lumia 1020’s photographic capabilities and offered much better performance. And then, over time, Android and iPhone caught up to and then surpassed Lumia, as Nokia and then Microsoft struggled through an era of lower-end handsets and diminishing returns.

Windows phone is a hard defeat for its fans to accept. But there was no point higher than the summer of 2013, when Nokia introduced the Lumia 1020 to the world and changed everything.

And I still have the Lumia 1020 and its snap-on camera grip, though the screen cracked at some point while in storage and the move, I guess. Ah well.

I wrote over 15 articles about the Lumia 1020 that summer. So here's just a bit of what I wrote about this amazing device at that time.
Nokia Lumia 1020 Preview
Nokia delivers a new flagship with an emphasis on high-end photography

July 11, 2013

At a live event in New York City today, Nokia announced its latest flagship smart phone, the Lumia 1020. And while this device may closely resemble its other unibody Lumia designs at first glance, it ships with an amazing 41-megapixel camera that could change smart phone photography forever.

First, the basics. For the most part, the Lumia 1020 very closely resembles the Lumia 920 in ways both good and bad. It has the same unibody design, shipping in this case in black, white, and yellow polycarbonate. Despite that, the 1020 is noticeably lighter than the 920, remarkably so given the huge camera, and I wonder if some work wasn’t done to somehow change the internals of the body to make that unibody shell lighter. Whatever they did, it works. My complaints about the 920’s density do not apply to the 1020.

On the flipside, the 1020—unlike the 920 or 928, but like the 925 or 720—does not include wireless charging capabilities. As with those latter devices, Nokia will sell a clip-on back plate to add wireless charging, but that will add a bit of heft.

Like the 920, the 1020 ships with just 32 GB of storage, and it’s not expandable, which I find curious. It features similar components, too: A 4.5-i...