Nokia Lumia 1020 vs Samsung Galaxy S4
 

We’ve claimed at numerous times that it is very hard to keep track of the smartphone market these days due to the sheer volume of smartphone that come and go. However, there are some smartphones that wouldn’t fail to attract our notice for different reasons. For instance, Samsung Galaxy S4 is Samsung’s signature product and the successor of the previous best seller Samsung Galaxy S3. An impact like that is not going to go unnoticed. On the other hand, Nokia Lumia 1020 is a clear sequel for Nokia’s camera monster PureView 808 offering 41MP camera. That in itself is a reason good enough for it to not go un-noticed although the back-to-back sequels in the Lumia series (920, 925, 928 etc.) has made it difficult to keep track of what these numbers mean. So today we decided to go out and compare Nokia Lumia 1020 and Samsung Galaxy S4 that didn’t go unnoticed, and it sure is a comparison to watch for if you are on the fence trying to buy either of these smartphones.

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.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Review

Samsung Galaxy S4 that was revealed in March 2013 looks smart and elegant as ever. The outer cover emanates Samsung’s attention to detail with their new polycarbonate material making up the cover of the device. Samsung Galaxy S4 comes in two versions; Model I-9500 and Model I-9505. Samsung Galaxy S4 I9500 comes in White Frost and Black Mist with the usual rounded edges we are used to in Galaxy S3. I9505 model, in addition to White Frost and Black Mist, comes in Aurora Red too. S4 is 136.6 mm long while 69.8 mm wide with 7.9 mm thick. You can clearly see that Samsung has kept the size almost the same as Galaxy S3 to give a sense of familiarity while making it rather thin for a smartphone of this caliber. What this would imply is that you are going to have more screen to look at while having the same size as Galaxy S3. The display panel is 5 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display panel featuring a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels at a pixel density of 441 ppi. This is actually the first Samsung smartphone to feature 1080p resolution screen although several other manufacturers beat Samsung to it. Nonetheless, this display panel is incredibly vibrant and interactive. Also, Samsung features hover gestures in Galaxy S4; that is to say you can just hover your finger without actually touching the display panel to activate certain gestures. Another cool feature Samsung has included is the ability to perform touch gestures even with wearing gloves which would be a step forward towards usability. The Adapt Display feature in Samsung Galaxy S4 can adapt the display panel to make the display better depending on what you are looking at.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 I9500 features Samsung Exynos 5 Octa processor, which Samsung claims as the world’s first 8 core mobile processor. The Octa processor concept follows a recent whitepaper released by Samsung. They have taken a patent for the technology from ARM, and it’s known as big.LITTLE. The whole idea is to have two sets of Quad Core processors, the lower end Quad Core processors would consist of ARM’s A7 cores clocked at 1.2GHz while the high end Quad Core processors will have ARM’s A15 cores clocked at 1.6GHz. Theoretically, this will make Samsung Galaxy S4 the fastest smartphone in the world as of now. Samsung has also included three PowerVR 544 GPU chips in Galaxy S4 making it the fastest smartphone in terms of graphics performance as well; at least theoretically. The Samsung Galaxy S4 I9505 features 1.9GHz Krait 300 Quad Core processor on top of Qualcomm APQ8064T Snapdragon 600 chipset along with Adreno 320 GPU. Strangely enough, Samsung has decided to include a microSD card slot on top of the 16 / 32 /64 GB internal memory you already have. The RAM is the usual 2GB, which is plenty for this beefy device.

Samsung Galaxy S4 has 13MP camera that comes with a bunch of awesome features. It certainly doesn’t necessarily feature a newly crafted lens, but Samsung’s new software features are sure to be a hit. Galaxy S4 has the ability to include audio in to photos you snap which can act as a live memory. As Samsung put it, it’s like adding another dimension to the visual memories captured. The camera can capture over 100 snaps within 4 second, which is just awesome, and the new Drama Shot features means that you can choose multiple snaps for a single frame. It also has an eraser feature which can erase unwanted objects from your photos. Finally, Samsung feature dual camera, which lets you capture the photographer as well as the subject and superimpose yourself in the snap. Samsung has also included an inbuilt translator called S Translator, which can translate nine languages as of now. It can translate from text to text, speech to text and speech to speech in any way convenient for you. It can also translate written words from menu, books or magazines, as well. Right now, S Translator supports French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish. It is also deeply integrated with their chat applications, as well.

Samsung has also included a customized version of S Voice which can act as your personal digital assistant and Samsung has optimized this to be used when you are driving too. They have made the transfer from your old smartphone to the new Galaxy S4 very easy with the introduction of Smart Switch. The user can separate their personal and work spaces using the Knox feature enabled in Galaxy S4. The new Group Play connectivity seems like a new differentiating factor, as well. There were a lot of rumors going on about Samsung Smart Pause which tracks your eyes and pauses a video when you look away and scrolls down when you look down or up which is awesome. S Health application can be used to track your health details including your diet, exercises and can connect external equipment to record data, as well. They also have a new cover that is more or less similar to the iPad cover which makes the device sleep when the cover closes.

As speculated, Samsung Galaxy S4 comes with 4G LTE connectivity as well as 3G HSDPA connectivity along with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n for continuous connectivity. The inclusion of removable battery is also a nice addition compared to all the unibody designs we’ve been seeing.

A Brief Comparison Between Nokia Lumia 1020 and Samsung Galaxy S4

• 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 Samsung Galaxy S4 model I9500 is powered by 1.6GHz Quad Core Cortex A15 processor and 1.2GHz Quad Core Cortex A7 processor on top of Samsung Exynos Octa 5410 chipset along with PowerVR SGX 544MP3 GPU and 2GB of RAM. S4 model I9505 is powered by 1.9GHz Krait 300 Quad Core processor on top of Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset along with Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB of RAM.

• Nokia Lumia 1020 runs on Windows Phone 8 while Samsung Galaxy S4 runs on Android OS v4.2.2 Jelly Bean.

• 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 Samsung Galaxy S4 has 5.0 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, featuring a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels at a pixel density of 441 ppi, and reinforced by Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

• 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 Samsung Galaxy S4 has 13MP camera with advanced functionality like simultaneous HD video and image recording, dual shoot etc with software controlled image stabilization that can capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 fps.

• Nokia Lumia 1020 is smaller, thicker and heftier (130.4 x 71.4 mm / 10.4 mm / 158g) than Samsung Galaxy S4 (136.6 x 69.8 mm / 7.9 mm / 130g).

• Nokia Lumia 1020 has 2000mAh battery while Samsung Galaxy S4 2600mAh.

Conclusion

These two smartphone we compared so far are disparate as two smartphones could be. They come from different operating system camps and hence it is nearly impossible to compare them directly against each other. Samsung Galaxy S4 is an all-rounder in terms of smartphones while Nokia Lumia 1020 is targeted at the niche area of photography. It is essentially a camera with smartphone functionality as numerous analysts discussed over the past two days. However, Samsung Galaxy S4 comes with industry best hardware specs with Samsung’s big.LITTLE architecture and the Octa processors giving those of us who are in to performance a clear choice. Nokia fans shouldn’t get disheartened because even though Lumia 1020 doesn’t come with the industry leading specs, it comes with enough threads to make Windows Phone 8 moving and it’s unlikely that the requirements for the OS would change in the foreseeable future which means you are safe for some time. Other than that, what you can look for includes the respective prices, your personal brand loyalty & OS loyalty, your personal preference on aesthetics of the smartphone etc. As such, we believe you can make an informed purchasing decision having considered all these factors in to your argument.

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