We got out Lumias yesterday. I bought a pair of Lumias for my fiance and myself.

She wanted a small screen, so she now has a Lumia 620 to replace her old iPhone 3GS and I have a Lumia 1020.

So far very happy. Using the AMOLED to display the time when the screen is "off" is a nice features, something I've missed since switching to a smartphone from my old Nokia dumb phones; turning the phone over, so it is face down turns it off and it turns itself off automatically after half an hour or so, shaking it "wakes" up the clock again.

Double tapping the display wakes the 1020 up, similar to the LG G2 (among others). The display itself is lovely, deep black, it puts the Galaxy S3 to shame.The colours are vibrant, as you would expect.

The camera is also excellent, with its 41mp sensor. I took a couple of test photos in the lounge yesterday and they look really crisp and clear. If that is generally how well they come out, then it could be the first smartphone camera that replaces my compact Canon Ixsus, although that still has a better zoom.

All the apps I use on a regular basis are available, so no problems there.

The 620 is a bargain basement Lumia, a step above the 520, but a smaller screen. Its dimensions match the iPhone 3GS, so my fiance is very happy with it. The 3GS was starting to lose battery life, it had been dropped one to many times and the housing around the headphone socket was broken away and there was a loose connection, causing the sound on the headphones to keep going to left ear only. Like the 1020, I bought it on Amazon under the Warehouse Deals and it turned out to be an "as new" Danish model. It looks immaculate, just the box is a little rough, where the original seals were broken. Luckily the set-up processes second screen asks you to select the language, so that wasn't a problem.

It is obviously a little slower than the 1020 and it only has 8GB storage, so I ordered a 16GB card to go with it - my fiance listens to music on it. Annoyingly the free Nokia music streaming service is only available on the 1020 and I don't listen to music, so it is wasted... That said, she only listens to music when out Nordic Walking, so it would run over data and she has a low-end contract, with 200MB a month, so I would guess that the streaming would eat through that very quickly anyway - she walks for about 2 - 3 hours at a time.

Getting her used to the Windows Phone 8 interface was quick and easy, I gave her a quick overview of how the tiles worked, then I had to take the dog for a walk. When I got back, she had put a PIN-Lock on the start screen and was selecting ring tones. She also managed to set up her Yahoo! account on the phone without too many problems (she couldn't remember her password). For someone who was scared of even using an iPhone 18 months ago, coming from an old Nokia dumb phone and a complete computerphobe, I think that is a good indication of how friendly the interface is.

Question: Do photos get graint if taken in poor light? Most phones are terrible for that.
Does it blur with any hand movement while taking photos? My current phone isn't perfect, but the one before was terrible of that. It made it almost useless for photos.
Do the photo's look like crap is you use the digital zoom? I've never found a phone camera yet that took good zoomed in photos.

Just taken a pic in my office in the cellar with only a small window and no flash... It isn't "dark", but the phones did want to use a flash. I took the same image of a black keyboard with the GS3 and the 1020 and the 1020 had noticeably less grain; the GS3 image was grainy without zooming in, the 1020 only after I zoomed into to look at the gaps between the keys. I'll see if I can upload them shortly to give a comparison.

Edit: Close-up of the same area of the keyboard using Lumia and S3. As you can see, the Lumia photo is much sharper. Both photos were taken within a minute of each other, both using standard settings, but without flash. Apart from cutting out the area of interest, I have not made any other changes to the images. They aren't a 100% match for position, but I think they are close enough to show the difference in quality.


Lumia-closeup von wright_is auf Flickr


gs3-closeup von wright_is auf Flickr