Nokia just released their new Lumia 1020 flagship phone and I’ve been messing with it for about a day.    This is an amazing phone and part of what makes it amazing are the improvements to the migration experience between this phone and the last time I made a move.   But much of it is about the 41 MP, yes 41, camera in the device and the Xeon flash it has.    This is just one cool phone …err, Camera…. err, Camera/Phone.  

Migration

First I have to start by raving about the migration experience.   Generally when moving from one Windows phone to a new one, you have to go through setting up the phone then run an application called Reinstaller to migrate your apps, and finally set up all your E-Mail etc.   This last step can have you looking up obscure server addresses for the email servers and the like.   It typically would take me 30 minutes to over an hour to set up a new phone. Well not anymore. 

During the initial boot sequence it asks you for all your e-Mail passwords, it migrates your apps (not all though as I’ll mention in a minute), and brings across most of your settings.    The apps it had problems with appeared to be ones where the developer changed the name or made some other change so the phone didn’t see the current app as connected to the old one you had.   For instance my Starbucks app, one of the most important, apparently has been replaced by SBUX card which worked pretty much the same way but I had to sort that out.   In addition I had to find and reselect my ring tone but all of this took about 5 minutes and then it was just waiting for the phone to sync my files (mostly e-Mail and music) and charge; all unattended.  

Killer Camera

This phone has a killer camera.   I have a bunch of cameras including a digital SLR from Sony and expect all of them will now be sitting out the summer on a shelf.   This camera is AMAZING! Funny thing while the Carl Zeiss Optics put this phone in the class with some of the better point and shoot cameras what really got me excited was the fact it has a real flash!   I don’t know of any phone builder that is putting Xeon flash systems in their phones and they are so much better when it comes to covering a subject with light than one or more LEDs.    

I almost feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven because I’m always forgetting to bring a camera and end up using the phone anyway.   The older 920 I’d been using, also with a Carl Zeiss lens but nowhere near as good, didn’t capture pictures I wanted to use that much. I can live with these pictures and one of the great aspects of taking pictures with a current generation Windows Phone is they automatically get pushed up to my SkyDrive which automatically pushes them down to my desktop or Tablet PC - making it far easier for me to connect them to something I’m writing or for adding to a forum post. 

The pictures do take up 8 MB each, but the camera has 32 GB so it seems unlikely I’ll ever run out of memory unless I fail to pull the pictures off the camera every month or so.   

Accessories

There are two phone accessories I missed. One is the inductive charging back because I love inductive charging and I’ll be looking to pick that up. They also have a camera back which adds an even bigger battery (this phone goes about 13 hours but if you are taking lots of pictures you’ll likely run out of power far sooner) and it provides a grip and a tripod mount if you need it.    Finally, I already have a set of Nokia’s Purity Pro headphones, they are noise cancelling and they are great on airlines.  

Wrapping Up: Amazing

I’ve been using the Windows Phone platform since it started, and yes even through the ugly version 6 and 7 years, and I’m a fan of 8. But I take a lot of pictures and don’t want (and often forget) to carry a camera.   This new Nokia 1020 is a god send for me and the improvements to the migration process, which aren’t done I’m told (more are coming), make moving to a new phone almost painless.   Of course I can’t wait to see what the folks at Nokia and Microsoft do next, impressive work!