FLEEX IS A SCAAAAAAAAAAAAAM

Nokia Lumia 1520

Bigger isn't always better, but in Nokia's case, it is. The 6-inch Lumia 1520 for AT&T is the fastest Windows Phone ever made. Slimmer and lighter than you'd expect for a supersize handset, the 1520 brings home the goods: a huge 1080p HD display, a 20-megapixel camera, and a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor -- the latter a first for Windows Phone.

That high-res camera and outdoor legibility were bright spots. My red model's slippery finish, however, made it too easy to fumble. Some weak points with the platform itself -- like a limited voice assistant and missing TV and movie store -- hobbled the true usefulness of a phone whose screen size cries out for unending visual consumption.
The Lumia 1520's impressive specs and bold design are undoubtedly worth its $200 on-contract price tag for Windows Phone fans. However, if you're aching to milk every last drop of large-screen goodness from a tabletlike handset, then choose from any one of the multiplying Android options, like the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, HTC One Max, and potentially even the curved LG G Flex.

Design and build
 
Nokia's smartphones tend to be chubsters, especially when there's a higher-resolution camera involved, but not so with the 1520.
This colossus is much slimmer and sexier than many a Nokia handset -- a svelte 8.7 millimeters (0.34 inch) compared with the Lumia 1020's 0.41-inch depth. That's still slightly thicker than the Note 3 (0.33).
At 7.4 ounces, it's significantly heavier than the 5.9-ounce Note 3, but a tad lighter than the One Max (7.7 ounces). It feels hefty in the hand, but not too onerous for a phone of this size. I already carry a heavy purse stuffed with electronics; the 1520 fit right into the jumble.

Amazingly, the 20-megapixel shooter only puckers out from the back panel to form an "O" about the size of a quarter. Nokia switches out the Xenon flash of its Lumia 1020 camera workhorse for a dual LED flash here, partially in an effort to cinch the 1520's waistline.
The 1520 -- which comes in glossy red, matte black, matte white, and matte yellow (we reviewed it in red and black) -- handles well for its size, though the shiny variants are harder to grip, and the slippery device often tumbled from my fingers. Rounded sides and a curved back soften the 1520's sharper corners, making it more comfortable to hold -- though less easy to clamp in place than either the flat-sided One Max, Note 3, and even the 6.4-inch Sony Xperia Z Ultra.

Proportionally, the 1520 feels tall rather than squat, though the device is still far too massive for my hands and I had to strain my fingers to (try to) perform some tasks one-handed. Of course, my paws are smaller than some, and size is (always) a matter of personal preference. It sticks out halfway from my back pocket, and even more from the front pocket. It did, however, fit better in the front and back pockets of the loose slacks of several men, and I could see it sliding into the internal pocket of a blazer. Likewise, there's plenty of room for a 1520 in a satchel or purse.

Unlike Samsung's Note 3 and 6.3-inch Galaxy Mega, the Lumia 1520 has no software provisions for one-handed operation. That isn't necessarily a bad thing; I'm not convinced that those modifications work terribly well anyhow. On the other hand, the 1520's touch-sensitive targets are larger, so you'll have a better-than-usual chance of nailing the spot you want. For instance, I was able to effectively scroll through information-rich Web sites like Wikipedia with my thumb on the very edge of the display.

As for the materials, Nokia sticks with its signature polycarbonate unibody design, adding a microSD card door to the nano-SIM card door, both of which are flush with the left spine. This slot, which you open with a tool that comes in the box (or an earring back, in a pinch), puts the 1520 on par with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and HTC One Max -- all three have 32GB of internal storage, and can accept up to 64GB more. The SIM card tray is awkwardly positioned upside-down, which means it could fall out if you're not careful.

You'll find the headset jack on the top rim, a Micro-USB charging port down below, and the power/lock, volume, and camera shutter buttons on the right spine. Nokia proudly points out that the 1520 houses four microphones, one for the top and bottom of each side, to control noise if you do happen to hold the alarmingly large handset to your ear.
Although there's just one speaker on the back, music from Pandora, games, and Nokia Music Mix and YouTube videos streamed out loudly and clearly. Movie previews from Flixster sounded thicker and more garbled, which I suspect was more of an issue with Flixster's files than with the phone's ability to play them.

Screen quality
 
Most of the phone's chassis is taken up by its 6-inch 1080p HD LCD screen, which made the Windows Phone start screen pop.
Colors look bright and edges crisp on the Lumia 1520's screen, which has a pixel density of 367ppi. The One Max and Note 3, with their slightly smaller screens, do pack in more pixels, but the difference is hardly noticeable.

Nokia always wins my appreciation for its work on ratcheting down screen reflectance with a polarizing filter called ClearBlack Display. Not only is it intended to fight glare in direct sunlight -- which makes screens easier to read -- it also helps keep light bounceback in check indoors. With the sunlight readability setting on (relax, it's default), the Lumia 1520 automatically adjusts when it registers bright rays, and backs off when you go back inside. This makes a big difference when you're relying on your phone to read directions or reference a Web site while you're walking outside.

Indeed, with all three phones on both automatic settings and maximum brightness settings, the Lumia 1520 was the easiest of the trio to read outside in the direct noonday sun. Colors were punchier, text looked sharper (and also rendered larger), and glare was easier to dodge. If you're a fan of a different color tone, you can adjust the phone's color profile in the settings.
Thanks to its sensitive screen, you can operate the phone with (most) gloves or with a fingernail.

OS and features
 
Along with the midlevel Nokia Lumia 1320, the Lumia 1520 is the first to ship Microsoft's slightly updated OS, imaginatively called Windows Phone 8 Update 3. The main thing you need to know is that this tweak introduces a three-column view for device screens measuring 6 inches and above.
This layout fits naturally on the 1520, not toylike as it could have looked if Microsoft had just opted to increase the size of its already large live tiles. The three-column view has the bonus of bringing more icons to the screen, which means less scrolling for you, especially if you make use of the smallest tiles. You'll also find that more e-mails and gallery photos fill the screen, another fringe benefit of upsizing.
Windows Phone gives you standard calendar and alarm tools, Xbox gaming tie-ins, podcasts, and the mobile version of the Microsoft Office suite. Also included is 7GB of Skydrive cloud storage. Multitasking, multiple inboxes, integrated social sharing, music identification, and a barcode scanner are also woven into the Windows Phone platform.


Perhaps more important than what's there is what's missing. Microsoft's outdated TellMe software can open any installed app, make calls, send a text, and search the weather (among other things,) but it lacks the kind of deeply-integrated natural language engine powering Apple's Siri and Google's Voice Actions (commonly called Google Now).
Microsoft is hard at work on Cortana, its belated answer to these two, but that doesn't help the 1520. Unlike iOS and Android, you can't specifically search for much, and the phone sure won't read out answers to you. You can't even dictate text into messages using a keyboard toggle; it doesn't exist. For a phone as large and sometimes hard to hold as the 1520, voice dictation integrated into every keyboard (not just e-mail and text composition) is something I yearned for throughout my testing period.
Also conspicuously absent is a native Microsoft store for buying and renting TV shows and movies, a shame since the 1520's 6-inch screen is primed for extended video playback. Of course, there are plenty of third-party ways to get content: Hulu+, Netflix, Vevo, Vimeo, YouTube, and Crackle, for example, plus AT&T's aforementioned U-Verse Mobile TV service. But don't let those distract you from Microsoft's missed opportunity in closing the loop itself.

 As for preloaded apps, a plethora from AT&T, Nokia, and Microsoft and their partners awaits -- like Nokia Music and Here Maps, AT&T's subscription Mobile TV ($10 per month), and Bing Finance and Weather, to name just a few. The Vine video snippet creation app, Yellow Pages Mobile, and Zinio are other examples of partner installations.


Seek out Nokia's many branded apps, and you'll find a new one that the company is pushing hard. Called Nokia Storyteller, this optional app (whose shortcut is preloaded by default) essentially mashes up your photo gallery with geotagging to create a timeline of your happenings which you can follow on a map.
The interface looks clean, and I love the idea of Nokia software intelligently using metadata to cluster together photos by theme (yes, you can edit them if the groupings are wrong). Over time, and travels outside your home city, it promises a more comprehensive way to tell family and friends about recent trips, especially since the app uses Nokia's Here mapping software to pull in nearby businesses and landmarks.
At these early stages, it just isn't clear if Storyteller is a pretty but minimally useful addition, or a feature that people will learn to use. Folks who prefer a spatial reference to locations (like my dad, who endearingly interrupts stories to ask for cross streets), are likely to get the most excited.

Back on the hardware end of things, there's NFC, or near-field communications, onboard the 1520, and Qi wireless charging makes its return.

Cameras and video

Nokia's deep investment in outrageous optics continues in the Lumia 1520. Like other Nokia phones, the 1520 uses Carl Zeiss Optics and the PureView technology that Nokia is associating with its brand. There are ball bearings for effective optical image stabilization, and a dual-LED flash instead of the Xenon flash found in both Verizon's Lumia 928 and in the Lumia 1020.
You'll also find a backside-illuminated sensor and a f/2.4 aperture, 16:9 default aspect ratio, and 26mm focal length.

In addition to hardware, the 1520's camera app has roughly the same Nokia Camera app we saw in the Lumia 1020, down to the onscreen controls you can tap to futz with exposure ratings, and so on -- either individually or all at once. The 1520's version also bundles in a shortcut to the Nokia Smart Cam app, which was previously a lens of its own. Now, you tap an onscreen button to get at those tools, which include "Best face" for group photos and some action modes, the start of a good consolidation.

Nokia also provides a handful of separate lenses (read: camera apps) like Panorama mode, Nokia Creative Studio, Nokia Video Trimmer, and a new one called Refocus, which works sort of like the Lytro camera to shift focus after you take a shot.
These additions certainly boost the camera's capabilities...in aggregate. Unfortunately, Nokia hasn't made fixes that would answer most of my UI critiques, which is to basically blend functionality into one single app. The new Refocus app perfectly highlights my frustrations. A specific app for a specific task, Refocus doesn't actually invoke the flash, so forget about taking well-lit shots with it at night.
Also, because Refocus takes a series of shots to wield its computational magic, you also have to anticipate wanting to play around with focal ranges or pops of color, its secondary task. I never found a natural use case where I was unsure where I wanted to focus the lens. When in doubt, I would personally just take two separate pictures myself.

Even the Smart Cam app carries over some problematic logic, like some confusing icons and missing onscreen controls to quickly toggle between the front and back cameras. Since you're processing much larger images, and saving both the full size image and a 5-megapixel image that's used in most sharing situations, it takes much longer to process photos. Count on four seconds from one shot to the next, instead of one or two seconds.
Note, too, that the default camera app isn't the native Windows Phone camera, so if you'd prefer to use that one, or Panorama mode, or the video trimmer, you'll need to switch. Every. Single. Time.
Image quality isn't as sharp as it is on the 41-megapixel 1020, which lets you get astoundingly up close in lossless cropping. Still, the 1520 produces strong images on its own. Low-light conditions are better than some when using the focus flash even when the regular flash was turned off, but aren't quite as impressive as they are on other Nokia phones. Cropping still yielded some detail-rich results on the 1520, even if the camera tended to cast objects in a slight blue light.
 

Lenovo Phab 2

 

  Lenovo Phab 2

 Design

• Device type:
  • Smart phone
• OS:
  • Android (6.0)
• Dimensions:
  • 6.89 x 3.52 x 0.38 inches (175 x 89.5 x 9.6 mm)
• Weight:
  • 7.94 oz (225 g)
    the average is 5.3 oz (150 g)
• Colors:
  • Gray, Gold

Display

• Physical size:
  • 6.4 inches
• Resolution:
  • 720 x 1280 pixels
• Pixel density:
  • 229 ppi
• Technology:
  • IPS LCD
• Screen-to-body ratio:
  • 72.58 %
• Features:
  • Light sensor, Proximity sensor

Camera

• Camera:
  • • 13 megapixels
  • Flash:
    • Dual LED
  • Hardware Features:
    • Autofocus (Phase detection)
  • Software Features:
    • Geo tagging
• Camcorder:
  • • Yes
  • Features:
    • Video calling
• Front-facing camera:
  • • 5 megapixels
  • Features:
    • Wide Angle

Hardware

• System chip:
  • • MediaTek
  • Model:
    • MT8735
• Processor:
  • Quad-core, 1300 MHz, ARM Cortex-A53, 64-bit
• Graphics processor:
  • • Mali-T720
• System memory:
  • 3072 MB RAM
• Built-in storage:
  • 32 GB
• Storage expansion:
  • microSD, microSDHC, microSDXC up to 128 GB

 

Battery

 

• Capacity:
  • 4050 mAh
• User replaceable:
  • Yes
• Talk time:
  • 32.00 hours
    the average is 14 h (825 min)
• Stand-by time:
  • 14.0 days (336 hours)

Multimedia

 

• Music player:
  • Filter by:
    • Album, Artist, Genre, Playlists
  • Features:
    • Album art cover, Background playback, Dolby Atmos
• Radio:
  • • FM
• Speakers:
  • Earpiece, Loudspeaker

Cellular

• GSM:
  • 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz
• UMTS:
  • 850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz
• FDD LTE:
  • 800 (band 20), 850 (band 5), 900 (band 8), 1800 (band 3), 1900 (band 2), 2100 (band 1), 2600 (band 7) MHz
• TDD LTE:
  • 2300 (band 40), 2500 (band 41), 2600 (band 38) MHz
• Data:
  • LTE
• Micro SIM:
  • Yes
• Multiple SIM cards:
  • • 2 slots

 

Connectivity

• Bluetooth:
  • • 4.0
• Wi-Fi:
  • • 802.11 a, b, g, n, dual-band
• USB:
  • • USB 2.0
  • Connector:
    • microUSB
  • Features:
    • Mass storage device, USB charging
• Positioning:
  • GPS, A-GPS
• Navigation:
  • Turn-by-turn navigation, Voice navigation
• Other:
  • Tethering, Computer sync, OTA sync

 

Samsung Galaxy On7 Pro

Key Features

• 5.0-Inch TFT HD Display
• 2GB RAM
• 16GB Internal Storage
• Android Marshmallow 6.0
• 13MP Primary Shooter
• 5MP Selfie Shooter
• 3,000mAh Battery Module
• Dual-SIM with 4G VoLTE
• S-Bike Mode
• Ultra-Data Saving Mode
• Micro-SD support up to 128GB
• 14 Regional Languages Supported

Samsung is still one of the leading handset manufactures even with an influx of numerous Chinese brands. While the Indian market prefers value for money, many individuals still look for offline stores and tier-1 brands when it comes to their smartphone requirements. Therefore, the Korean giant is still a force to reckon with within the Indian contingent and it brings back functionality with Samsung Galaxy On7 Pro. The handset is a beefed up version of the existing Galaxy On7 but will major modifications.
In terms of pricing, Samsung Galaxy On7 Pro sets us back at Rs. 11,190 which is pretty competitive for the featured set of attributes. That said, we finally have the review unit and we will be discussing whether this gadget is worth investing in.

Design

Upon unboxing the fluorescent green box, we get the golden colored handset followed by the QSG, pretty basic earphones, standard USB cable, normal charger with 5V/1A output and the massive 3,000mAh battery module.
This device looks pretty simple and comparable to its immediate predecessor— the Galaxy On7. In terms of thickness, Samsung Galaxy On7 Pro doesn’t disappoint at a mere 8.20mm.

This gadget is slightly on the heavier side and even with a lot of plastic weighs close to 172 grams. Aesthetics are kept simple and most of the rocker keys are placed strategically. Moreover, the faux leather panel at the back is textured and offers a good grip. Side bezels are narrow and the edges look premium with illusory metallic accents which are actually made up of plastic and won’t be distinguishable unless we establish any physical contact. Lastly, we do get the distinguishable home button at the front. The embedded keys aren’t backlit which is slightly saddening.

Display

Samsung Galaxy On7 Pro offers a standard 5.5-Inch TFT screen and it is surprising to see that Super AMOLED display has been given a miss.

In terms of resolution, we get a basic 720p screen but the lack of ambient light sensor might be an issue. However, Samsung offers an outdoor mode for better visibility which kind of works well.

Specs

This handset is pretty basic in terms of internals and offers a standard quad-core processor from Qualcomm. The version hasn’t been mentioned but this chipset clocks at 1.2GHz. 2GB RAM is a slight improvement over the predecessor.

Graphics are handled by the Adreno 306 GPU. Moreover, we get 16GB of RAM in comparison to 8GB on Galaxy On7. Micro-SD support is available with an expandable limit of up to 128GB.

Camera

The 13MP primary shooter is actually nice and well-lit shots are pretty vibrant. However, in low-lighting we do experience some noise and graininess. Selfies are pretty ok with the 5MP front facing camera unit. Samsung Galaxy On7 Pro keeps the camera interface pretty basic and doesn’t look to add many thrills to the beautification modes.

Battery

The 3,000mAh removable battery looks pretty good for the existing specs sheet and we are expecting it to last for a day and half on medium usage.

Fast charging isn’t available with the 1A output but the battery rating is on the higher side for the given price point and the company more or less lives up to the claimed talk-time and standby support.

Software

In terms of OS, we get Android Marshmallow v6.0 which is still pretty latest. However, it wouldn’t be wise to expect Android Nougat on this handset even in future.

With security being an issue, Samsung has offered the latest security patch, July 2016 with this smartphone. The user interface is smooth and has now been optimized for working better with the hardware.

Connectivity and Add-Ons

Most of the connectivity schemes are persisted with including Dual-SIM support and 4G VoLTE compatibility. Wireless support is rendered to the same besides Bluetooth v4.2 and GPS. We also get a FM Radio and the 3.5mm audio jack. The box reads ‘Indian SIM Card Only’ which means we can activate of unlock this handset with an Indian SIM card and might use it later over international networks.

This handset comes with the S-Bike mode and multi-lingual support for up to 14 regional languages. The ultra-data saving mode is yet another desirable addition. Speaker output is pretty decent as well. Upon purchase, the online stores are offering lucrative packages to the customers— rendered by a domestic carrier, Idea.