Nokia Lumia 1020 vs HTC Windows Phone 8X
We have seen a lot of Windows phones come and go in the recent past, and it seems they are holding up their fair share in the smartphone market. There are a few hiccoughs for Windows phones and the lack of apps in their app store plays a major role in holding them at the third position in the market. However, Microsoft also has a strict control on the hardware that they are willing to provide the operating system for which might be a restriction in itself as well as opposed to the open platform Android and home grown Apple iPhone. Partially owing to this control and the overlooking hardware requirements Windows Phone 8 has, almost all the Windows Phone smartphones feature the same hardware specs. As such, it is very difficult to differentiate as all of them are the same inside and performs equally well. It is only by looks, accessories, additions like optical performance one can determine which smartphone to choose. Today we are comparing two smartphone released almost 10 months apart, but surprisingly features the same hardware aspects proving my previous point. However, in this case, one has a superior and unique differentiating factor compared to the other you can exploit so it’ll be an interesting comparison.
Nokia Lumia 1020 Review
Nokia Lumia 1020 is essentially a point & shoot camera as much as it’s a smartphone. As such, let us discuss its camera first before moving any further. Lumia 1020 offers a 41MP camera with six lens Carl Zeiss optics that can capture wide angles, as well. The camera sensor is ultra large and features Nokia’s PureView Image processing software along with a smaller LED flash and a Xenon flash. Interestingly the camera in Nokia Lumia 1020 offers both manual and auto focus; while the auto focus is fast, manual focus is certainly a nice option. It has 3X zoom with the super resolution sensor and offers to capture 1080p HD videos at 30 frames per second. Nokia also claims that they have included enhancements to video capturing, which translates in to better and sharper videos in real life. Another interesting addition is the updated version of Nokia’s Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) technology with ball bearings surrounding the lens. It has proven to be very effective so all of us out there who has shaky hands can relax and take great photos with Lumia 1020. It has some serious low light photography options with the big sensor it has and we certainly are impressed with the camera. The layout of the camera app is revamped with an even more intuitive interface that gives you manual control of your camera to make it work just as you require it to work. The Nokia’s Pro camera provides us with an interesting opportunity to take pro shots with our smartphone not to mention the long exposure times it gives us. All these facts translate in to awesome photos, and we’ll be seeing a lot of them after the Lumia 1020 is released.
Now that we have established the optical greatness of Nokia Lumia 1020, let us look at what the rest of the smartphone can offer us. It inherits its looks from the previous Lumia smartphones with the squared polycarbonate cover and comes in White, Black and Yellow. It’s fairly thinner and lighter than the Lumia 920 and has 4.5 inches AMOLED capacitive touchscreen that features a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels at a pixel density of 332 ppi. The Corning Gorilla Glass 3 reinforcement protects the screen against scratches while PureMotion HD+ technology reproduces deep blacks and naturalistic colors on your screen. Nokia Lumia 1020 is powered by 1.5GHz Dual Core Krait processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon S4 chipset with Adreno 225 GPU and 2GB of RAM. As you can see, there is nothing stellar about the hardware specs of this device because, in Android standards, this is pretty old school. However, this combination works well with Microsoft Windows Phone 8 operating system and that makes it tick. But, we think there may be a slight lag in the operations of 1020 although it’ll be hard to spot for any regular user. The beefy 2GB RAM can compensate towards a better user experience with acceptable graphics performance from Adreno 225. The internal storage stagnates at 32GB without an option to expand it using a microSD card, but we are more than happy with 32GB, so that’s unlikely to be a hindrance.
Nokia Lumia 1020 comes with 4G LTE connectivity along with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n connectivity for continuous use. DLNA enables you to stream rich media content right from your smartphone to a big wireless DLNA display panel. Dolby Digital Plus sound enhancement is included which provides decent sounds with 1020. Other than that, it is pretty standard Windows Phone with all the value additions and drawbacks associated with Windows. It has 2000mAh battery that provides a talk time of 19 hours on 2G and 13 hours on 3G, which is very good.
HTC Windows Phone 8X Review
HTC has injected a vivid blue and violet color to this attractive smartphone. It also comes in Graphite Black, Flame Red and Limelight Yellow. The handset is somewhat in to the thick side of the spectrum although HTC has disguised it with tapered edges, which make others perceive it as rather a thin smartphone. It comes with a unibody chassis which we can complement due to the aesthetically appealing design. It is powered by 1.5GHz Dual Core Krait processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon S4 chipset with Adreno 225 GPU and 1GB of RAM. The handset is powered by Windows Phone 8X as indicated by the name. However, Windows Phone 8X didn’t have a completed build of the operating system just yet so we won’t be able to talk about the aspects of the OS right now. What we can guess is that the handset would have acceptable performance matrices with the high end processor it has.
One of the things we didn’t like about HTC Windows Phone 8X is its stagnating 16GB of internal storage without the option to expand it using SD card. This may well be a deal breaker for some of you out there. However, the handset comes with Beats Audio Sound Enhancement; so, a premium audio quality can be expected. It has 4.3 inch S LCD2 capacitive touchscreen display featuring a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 342ppi. It is moderately weighted at 130g with evenly distributed weight, which feels good in your hands.
Unfortunately, Window Phone 8X doesn’t feature 4G LTE connectivity which might be an issue when competing with rivals. Compensating that, HTC has offered NFC connectivity along with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n for continuous connectivity alongside 3G HSDPA connectivity. This smartphone has 8MP camera at the back with autofocus and LED flash with the ability to capture 1080p HD videos. The front camera is 2.1MP, which is impressive and HTC guarantees a wide angle view with 1080p HD video recording from the front camera, as well. The battery size is 1800mAh with which we can expect a talk time around 6 to 8 hours.
A Brief Comparison Between Nokia Lumia 1020 and HTC Windows Phone 8X
• Nokia Lumia 1020 is powered by 1.5GHz Krait Dual Core processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon chipset along with Adreno 225 GPU and 2GB of RAM while HTC Windows Phone 8X is powered by 1.5GHz Krait Dual Core processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon S4 chipset with Adreno 225 GPU and 1GB of RAM.
• Nokia Lumia 1020 runs on Microsoft Windows Phone 8 while HTC Windows Phone 8X runs on Microsoft Windows Phone 8X.
• Nokia Lumia 1020 has 4.5 inches AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display featuring a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels at a pixel density of 332 ppi and reinforced with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 while HTC Windows Phone 8X has 4.3 inch S LCD 2 capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 342ppi.
• Nokia Lumia 1020 has 41MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics and hardware based optical image stabilization that can capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 fps and capable of extreme low light performance while HTC Windows Phone 8X has 8MP camera that can capture 1080p HD videos at 30 fps.
• Nokia Lumia 1020 is slightly smaller, thicker and heftier (130.4 x 71.4 mm / 10.4 mm / 158g) than HTC Windows Phone 8X (132.4 x 66.2 mm / 10.1 mm / 130g).
• Nokia Lumia 1020 has 2000mAh battery while HTC Windows Phone 8X has 1800mAh battery.
Conclusion
Whenever we discuss a Nokia Lumia, it all tends to come down to a single factor which is the camera performance. As usual, it’s the same case here where Lumia 1020 provides superior camera performance compared to HTC Window Phone 8X. In fact, in comparison to Lumia 1020, camera performance of HTC Windows Phone 8X fades next to nothing. However, other than that, you can clearly see that everything else is almost the same starting from the specs. They even look somewhat alike although Nokia maintains their Lumia-ness in 1020, as well. So the way we figured it out, you will be interested in purchasing either of these smartphones depending on the amount you are willing to spend and the tradeoffs you are willing to create. If you use your camera marginally and not quite interested in the pro mobile photography, HTC Windows Phone 8X will give you the best value for money. If you are the person who’s always obsessed with how well the photo is, then Nokia Lumia 1020 can really help to let you make the best out of your efforts.