Assessment: Nokia Lumia 1520 for AT&T

The front is nearly all glass. There's just a thin bezel where the glass meets the side edges as they curve away. The transition from the screen to the sides is smooth; there's no hard edge. When the display is off, the only thing visible in the jet-black glass is the slit for the earpiece. The Nokia logo vanishes, and the three capacitive buttons are invisible unless the screen is lit up. Again, the design emphasis is on simplicity.

Like the majority of Nokia's Lumia devices, all of the major controls are placed on the right edge of the phone. The volume toggle is closest to the top, with the screen lock in the middle, and the dedicated camera button towards the bottom. All three buttons share a slim profile. They can be somewhat hard to locate, and the volume toggle should be much further away from the screen lock button. Small nubs on the volume toggle might help. Each button has good travel and feedback, and the camera button has two well-defined stages for focusing and snapping shots.

Nokia hid the SIM card tray and the memory card slot in the left edge of the 1520. You need a tray tool or paper clip to eject the trays, which is sort of annoying. The memory card should be accessible without requiring a tool. The trays are flush with the surface, so they won't get snagged on anything. The headphone jack is on the top and the micro-USB port is on the bottom.

Since the 1520 is made from a unibody polycarbonate shell, there is no battery cover; the back is smooth, save for the camera module. You can't replace or pull the battery, which some might dislike, but the 1520 will charge wirelessly and there are contact pins plainly visible on the back for docking accessories. The camera module creates a little mound near the top, but it is nowhere as egregious as the Lumia 1020's bulge for its PureView imaging unit.

The 1520 is a massive device, but also quite possibly the best-ever from Nokia. The design, materials, colors, and manufacturing all come together in one excellent piece of hardware.
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