I've been paying £38 a month for an unlimited calls/txts contract on an iPhone 4s, contract now up.
I like the iPhone but the screen's a bit small and the new ones do nothing much to address that. Also 16GB is a bit mean (had to offload some apps/data to do the iOS 7 upgrade recently) and extra memory is iPhones is extortionate.
Nearly went for a Galaxy S5. Cost of hardware would have been c. £520 from O2 with a similar unlimited contract - £40 down, then 24 x £20 for the phone plus £18pm for the network service.
However I have just ordered a Nokia 1020 Windows phone.
The O2 version is 64GB (everywhere else has only 32GB version). Currently £240, or 24 x £10 for the hardware. So £28/month, unlimited as above, 2GB monthly data.
Same contract on a 16GB iPhone 5C would have been £38 a month.
GiffGaff want £405 for the Nokia 1020, and even a refurb one from O2 is £360.
So I ordered while the deal is there.
Went and had a look at one hands on in CPW this morning, just to make sure I like it (as much as you can make sure short of living with it). Very impressed.
The camera looks superb - it might even be the best there is on a phone. I use a phone camera quite a lot so looking forward to that. No card slot, but with 64GB that should be a problem.
www.nokia.com/gb-en/phones/phone/lumia1020/
(also in black!)
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Well played.
Wish to hell I'd got one of those when I changed last autumn instead of this lousy Sony Xperia SP on hopeless Android. Bah. Got to wait until September 15 to change now. Yuk.
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I just went into a Carphone warehouse shop (in Oxford Street) and said:
Needs to be cheap
Have a vibrator alert
Needs to be a Virgin PAYG phone as you can top these up without needing to hear
£5 for the phone, and £10 for account credit and five minutes later I'd paid and was walking away.
Does me, but I'm a very untypical user as the phone is only used for texts, anyone foolish enough to want a voice communication is totally ignored (I'm totally deaf).
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So you want a cheap virgin with a vibrator? :-)
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Will I do?
Sorry..........couldn't resist!
Pat
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I've got some virgin queens if that helps.. They vibrate when they sting...
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Some impressive sounding bumf on the Nokia 1020 camera.
i.nokia.com/blob/view/-/2723846/data/1/-/Lumia1020-whitepaper.pdf
I'm not a fan of high pixel counts, especially on small sensors, but this is how to use them.
When you digitally zoom of course you still have a decent number of pixels left in the shot. The phone also saves the full sized image anyway so it can be reframed afterwards.
It also creates a 5MP oversampled jpg which I expect is all I will need most of the time.
It'll be brilliant if it works.
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>>
>> It'll be brilliant if it works.
>>
I have one. It does, and it is. What really makes the high-end Lumias stand apart from the rest of the crowd, though, is mechanical image stabilisation. You can hear the gyros whirring in the camera if you put your ear to it, which means it takes stunning video and can do crisp and accurate night time shots.
I strongly recommend you install the Windows Phone 8.1 developer preview - sounds scary but it takes a good OS and makes it into one which can compete with Android and iOS.
www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-81-now-available
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Ah, thanks FF.
More tips welcome if they occur to you!
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>>When you digitally zoom of course you still have a decent number of pixels left in the shot
I avoid digitally zooming. It always seems to be better off editing the final full-size photo. Aside from anything else, digitally zooming in too much seems to increase shake - with me, anyway.
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>> I avoid digitally zooming...
>> Aside from anything else, digitally zooming in too much seems to increase shake -
>> with me, anyway.
But that's also true of an optical zoom, isn't it? Doubling the zoom doubles the apparent image movement caused by a shake, digital or optical.
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>>But that's also true of an optical zoom, isn't it?
It may well be, I don't know enough to know.
Optical zoom doesn't reduce the number of pixels though, does it? Whereas digital zoom does?
Or may be its just me.
Now that taking photographs is essentially free I am able to rely on quantity to reduce my uncertain quality.
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>> Optical zoom doesn't reduce the number of pixels though, does it? Whereas digital zoom does?
No/yes. The main drawback of optical zoom (AFAIK) is that it requires moving parts, so is relatively expensive.
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>>But that's also true of an optical zoom, isn't it? Doubling the zoom doubles the apparent image movement caused by a shake, digital or optical.>>
I know which I'd rather have, plus optical stabilisation in such circumstances...:-) Or, even better, my Nikon DSLR no matter how good the camera is in my HTC One X (a perfectly sound camera by the way). It does have optical stabilisation, although that might prove a pain under certain shooting modes.
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>>When you digitally zoom of course you still have a decent number of pixels left in the shot
>>
You magnify the pixels. Hence the loss of quality and the more you increase the magnification, the poorer the result.
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>> >>When you digitally zoom of course you still have a decent number of pixels left
>> in the shot
>> >>
>>
>> You magnify the pixels. Hence the loss of quality and the more you increase the
>> magnification, the poorer the result.
>>
But it's not the case with the Lumia 1020. Because you're generating a 5MP shot at the end of the day, you can zoom into the 41MP image several times over without losing definition.
gizmodo.com/full-resolution-lumia-1020-sample-shots-mostly-live-u-756012378
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>>But it's not the case with the Lumia 1020.>>
Maybe not. But it's a one off and, in fact, the quality of the lens plays the most critical role. I still have a 2MP Minolta E203 compact digital camera bought in 2001 that delivers astonishing resolution and quality; perfectly good enough, in fact, for first class A4 prints to be produced.
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I used the term "digital zoom" loosely. In the normal way of things there's no difference in the end result between so-called digital zoom (useless unless you really need it to find what you're aiming at) and just cropping into the full resolution shot.
I have a camera that will automatically transition from optical to digital zoom when the lens is at full reach. I turn the feature off, it's pointless - I edit everything I use anyway so I just crop, which enable me to frame better.
The Nokia 1020 does not have any optical zoom, so digital zoom or cropping is the only option.
At full wide, it makes a c. 35MP image (not 41 - the full sensor output isn't used for the jpgs, the unused ones being at the top or side of the frame depending on the aspect ratio used).
It then oversamples the large image file to create a 5MP jpg. This is "better" than using a 5MP sensor in the first place because each pixel is averaged from 7 pixels in the sensor output - the result is much lower noise in the image.
If you zoom to c. 3x, all that happens is that the sensor will record c.5MP from the centre of the sensor. So you will still have a 5MP image.
This is why Nokia claims "lossless" digital zooming. No zoom = 5MP. Zoom = 5MP. And unlike a typical optical zoom, you have the same maximum aperture available zoomed or unzoomed.
Of course it isn't quite as good, because there is now no oversampling in the resultant 5MP image.
Interestingly, the phone will still record the full sensor output anyway, so you can if you want "recrop" the unzoomed image later.
The bottom line is that the 1020 will give a genuine 5MP image at about 70mm focal length in SLR terms, with a crop/digital zoom from the full frame 27mm equivalent wide angle picture, using a lens that is too size-constrained to zoom optically. That's impressive.
The way the 1020 appears to work suggests it is worth using the digital zoom rather than just cropping from the 5MP oversampled image (losing pixels) or from the 35MP image (losing the oversampling) bearing in mind that you wouldn't necessarily be aware of where in the zoom range you are when you take a picture in most circumstances. But I'll have to figure out if that's the case when I get it.
I just hope I'm still as impressed when I see some actual pictures - I have high hopes, even though I don't expect pictures as good as I get from my 10MP LX3 compact.
Last edited by: Manatee on Sat 24 May 14 at 17:34
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Alanovic, I have the SP as well - what do you hate about it?
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I said on another thread I think - it was fine until I performed an upgrade to the Android OS on it. Now it randomly hangs, lags and crashes all day long. Takes a minute to open a text message, 30 seconds to start the camera, and often doesn't present me with any buttons to press to enable me to answer the phone when it rings.
I have reset to factory, I have used the Sony Repair Centre online, I have spoken to Sony and my network about it and they can offer no fix. It can not be rolled back to the previous version.
I am sick of it. I want to chuck it under a bus.
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>>I have reset to factory
Have you reset to factory and not uploaded any of your old stuff?
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That's right I remember now - I still haven't had the chance to upgrade the OS.
I am very happy with it but very occasionally I do get the "the phone is ringing but there is no display to answer the call" feature!
I am paying £20 a month or suchlike for it
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Mine's 26 sheets a month, but I did upgrade my internet allowance when I took the contract.
Pants pulled down. Want rid, no way out. Been with Orange on contract 15 odd years, and they won't do a thing to help.
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>> That's right I remember now - I still haven't had the chance to upgrade the
>> OS.
>>
No need - Al. will let you have his upgraded one in a swap!
That really is a shocking response from Orange Alanovic - you'd hope they'd make a virtue of necessity and rebate the remaining payments if you upgrade - as it is I don't imagine you'll be staying with them.
Looking at the forums, you are not alone either.
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3 out of 3 there, Manatee.
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Is it worth giving it to someone who knows how to root the phone and maybe get it back to the last OS?
Other than that, would be interesting to see what Trading Standards / Watchdog / Citizens Advice say about it?
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>> Is it worth giving it to someone who knows how to root the phone and
>> maybe get it back to the last OS?
>> Other than that, would be interesting to see what Trading Standards / Watchdog / Citizens
>> Advice say about it?
>>
Don't want to risk rooting it, if it went mammaries that's my lot.
I think I'll have another go at Orange. See if I can persuade them that maybe they don't want Trading Standards etc involved. Cheers.
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Given the spend they put into acquisition and retention, they should be itching to sign you up to a new contract without penalty.
But I've found mobile networks to be not very logical that way. I got involved with a couple a few years back, in relation to bad debt measurement and processes - to say they were acting like people with more money than sense would be an understatement.
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Nokia makes excellent phones again - but I'm not so fussed on Windows Phone. The camera on the 1020 is not quite what they had in the even better Symbian Pureview 808 but probably close.
I'm still happy with my HTC One (the M7 model). Camera is only 4M pixels but I've got excellent photos, especially in low light conditions. Still pleased after 12 months. It has optical image stabilisation but won't be as sophisticated as the 1020 from Nokia. But HTC dropped the stabilisation in their One M8 for some reason.
If they do make an HTC One M8 Prime I'll take a look though.
EDIT: I wonder how long Microsoft take to drop the Nokia name? And how long before they throw out all that was good at Nokia. Then again there's a Nokia Android based phone that hasn't been cancelled (yet).
Last edited by: rtj70 on Fri 23 May 14 at 19:49
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Phone bargain? - Alanovich
