It's all very well writing for AAWP, but sometimes it's good to step outside the Windows Phone ecosystem and evaluate devices from a cross-platform, ultra-critical perspective. This is something I (Steve) try to do with The Phones Show and in programme 219 it was the turn of Nokia's latest and biggest smartphone ever - the Lumia 1520 'phablet'. 

From the review:

Great camera and speaker too, two components I care about. The camera’s slightly larger than that in most smartphones, with a 1/2.5” sensor and a really well optimised dual LED flash. At 20 megapixels raw resolution, there’s some PureView oversampling and lossless zoom too, though not taken to the same extent as on my beloved 1020. Using the 1520 as a camera - or camcorder looks a little ridiculous, mind you, shades of using an iPad mini as a camera etc, but at least Nokia’s glorious ClearBlack Display polarisers mean that you can ALWAYS see what you’re shooting, unlike some other smartphones I could mention from the likes of Sony and Huawei.

Likewise, the speaker’s very good - together with the enormous and colourful LCD screen, this makes for a SUPERB media watching experience. Now if only there was a YouTube client or a decent Netflix app…. Sigh. Apps, eh? MetroTube does well here, mind you, and maybe the Netflix app will get a makeover sometime soon.

Summing up, my biggest question is not “Is the 1520 any good?” - it’s patently is a fabulous slice of silicon - but ‘Who’s going to buy the 1520?’ Smartphone newcomers wanting a phablet might look at this next to a Galaxy Note 3, but then wouldn’t they be swayed by the latter’s brand name, far larger selection of apps and sexy stylus? Windows Phone fans could upgrade to this, the biggest and highest specified of the breed, but they’d have to really, really want a bigger screen and the likes of the 925 are a far better fit for phone use, if I’m honest.

The Lumia 1520 right now is a little out in no man’s land. Can I foresee Microsoft pulling out all the stops and producing a next-gen update for this hardware that makes far better use of the horsepower and screen real estate? Maybe. I hope so. Otherwise this lovely piece of electronics is going to be rather wasted.

And here's the embedded video in full, with the Lumia 1520 video taking up most of the body of the show (it's around eight minutes):

Comments welcome - who do you think will buy the 1520? I see rumours on the wind of a smaller version, halfway between this and the more traditionally sized 925, 720, etc. If true, this should appeal to a much larger slice of the phone-buying public.