Nokia Lumia 1320 Hands-On Review

Nokia has launched two new high-end products today at Nokia World 2013 here in Abu Dhabi, the Lumia 1520 phablet and the Lumia 2520 tablet. But the company has also launched a product for the budget minded consumer. Behold, the Nokia Lumia 1320, a Windows Phone 8 smartphone that packs a 6 inch display while being relatively cheaper than its high-end sibling. Let us take a look at the Nokia Lumia 1320 hands-on review.

Display:

In order to keep the price low, Nokia has traded off on the display. The Lumia 1520 has a full HD 1080p display, the Lumia 1320 uses a 720p instead but the size remains same, 6 inches. To be fairly honest, there doesn’t seem to be much difference to the undiscerning eye when the Lumia 1320 is picked up. The display is wonderfully bright and viewing angles are great, it wouldn’t seem like a 720p display to a novice user. Though, obviously, its not that hard to figure out that its not actually full 1080p HD. The home screen is capable of displaying three columns of Live Tiles, which is testament to the fact that this feature isn’t resolution dependant, as the Lumia 1520 home screen offers three columns of Live Tiles as well, despite touting 1080p resolution.

Design:

Nokia has stayed true to its Lumia design legacy. The Lumia 1320 uses the familiar polycarbonate material in a unibody construction. The device is actually comfortable to hold, despite its sheer size. The construction feels sturdy and strong, something we’ve come to expect from Nokia Lumia smartphones.

The phablet is offered in a variety of colors, yellow, black, white and orange to be precise. Lumia 1320 weighs in at 220 grams and measures 164.25 x 85.9 x 9.79 millimeters.

Camera:

Imaging is another area where Nokia has traded off in order to keep the price low. Whereas the Lumia 1520 has a 20 megapixel PureView camera and a 2 megapixel HD wide-angle camera up front, the Lumia 1320 comes with a meagre 5 megapixel rear camera and a VGA up front. Though the camera is capable of 1080p video recording at 30 frames per second. Nokia’s new Nokia Camera app is included as well, it brings advanced photography options from the Nokia Smart cam and Pro cam applications.

Hardware Specifications:

Seeing as how it is a budget device, one can’t obviously expect high-end internal hardware. The Lumia 1320 is powered by a dualcore Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor aided by 1GB of RAM. Despite that, Windows Phone works flawlessly and is greatly responsive, though one might notice the occasional lag during heavy multitasking. There’s LTE support on board, so no compromises have been made on that front. Lumia 1320 has 8GB of internal memory with external expansion through microSD cards supported up to 64GB. Customers will also receive 7GB of SkyDrive cloud storage. There’s a 3,400mAh battery, BT 4.0 LE, micro-USB 2.0 but no NFC.

Price/Availability:

The Nokia Lumia 1320 will be first rolled out in China and Vietnam in early 2014, the launch will then soon be followed by other Asian markets such as India. Launch in Europe is also expected around the same time. The Lumia 1320 costs $339 without taxes and applicable carrier subsidies.