A lot of people have been saying some very nice things about the Sony Xperia Z2's 8MP oversampling camera, which is why I wanted to give it a quick head to head with the Lumia 1020, albeit not in perfect conditions, weather-wise. Did the Z2 get close to Nokia's masterpiece? That's a tough one to answer. It's close...ish, though the 1020 maintains a definite lead across all test images. See below for my test examples.
Guest writer Keir Brython reports back on his four months with the Nokia Lumia 1520 after a year with the Nokia 808 PureView. It's safe to say that he didn't find the journey from one platform to another all plain sailing and it's telling that he now has to carry around both smartphones, since the Windows Phone won't yet let him do everything he wants a smartphone to do.... Brickbats and bouquets abound in this real world testimony.
Never mind the underperforming Sony Xperia Z1/Z2/Z1 Compact and their 1/2.3" sensors, think back to head to heads with the original Galaxy S4 and you might suspect that the Galaxy S5 camera will be the real 'class of 2014' competition for 2013's camera champion, the Nokia Lumia 1020. And you'd be right. 16MP, 1/2.6" ISOCELL sensor and blazingly fast image processing means that for many casual use cases the S5 is, arguably, one of the best camera phones ever seen, even though it doesn't, ultimately, beat the 1020 across all light conditions and subjects.
I remain constantly surprised by the lack of knowledge of basic physics by those who write 'battery saving' articles across the web, in the context of smartphones. By far the most common bit of advice - reduce the frequency of email, PIM and social sync - seems to be given for all phones and all platforms and it's actually highly misleading. The underlying physics is far, far more important, if you want to keep your precious battery life while travelling. For 2G/3G/4G certainly - but also, almost counter-intuitively, for Wi-fi too.
Having a 'proper' Xenon flash in your smartphone (we're talking Nokia 808 and Lumia 1020 here) doesn't necessarily give you better low light shots of people - you have to know how to use the technology to best effect too. After criticism from some quarters about 'missed shots', I thought a 'how to' guide to Xenon might be in order, whichever of Nokia's flagship camera phones you own.
Now we've had a chance to look over the changes in Windows Phone 8.1, and consider them alongside some of the other announcements, there are many areas of business to discuss. One area of interest is the Android vs Windows Phone battle. While Windows Phone is the weaker and smaller partner, the last three months have shown the agility that the "new" Microsoft will have, and that could be enough to destabilise Android and bring some new partners to Microsoft's mobile table.
One question we were keen to see answered with Windows Phone 8.1 (now out in preview form for developers and enthusiasts) was whether the update interval for 'background tasks', the bits of applications which run every so often in the background to do useful stuff like update live tiles, would change from the current 30 minutes in Windows Phone 8.0 to something more frequent. It does seem from our tests that the interval hasn't changed, but fear not for there's more to updating in the background in 8.1 than simple scheduling...
Coming along for the ride with Windows Phone 8.1 (out now in 'preview' mode) is a whole new application from Microsoft - Podcasts. Yes, you've guessed it, yet another podcatching application, except that this time it's from the people who make the OS and it's pretty darned slick. Unfortunately, it's also pretty darned limited, so podcast fans shouldn't uninstall their favourite third party podcatcher just yet. Part review, part feature, here's my assessment of this application that's arriving very soon.
Over the years, I've looked at countless games on Windows Phone. The majority of them are deleted shortly after the review is posted, but many of them stay a week or two longer. Some of them are still on the handset after a few months, and in some cases years. Which games have been able to stay on my handset through deletions, save-finding missions, and hard resets?
In a month where there is a lot of attention on the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S5, the HTC One, and the Nokia Lumia 930, it's natural that there are going to be comparison articles, camera shoot-outs, and discussions around the specifications of the new flagships for the summer. It all makes for great content, and exciting reading, but it also takes away from another story, and one that perhaps is more indicative of the long-term path of smartphones in general. What about the budget handsets?
