Picking a winner between the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the Nokia Lumia 1020 is a very tough thing to do......
The Samsung Galaxy S4 has arguably been king of the smartphones since it launched earlier this year, combining brilliant specs with equally brilliant features for a top flight handset. Now Nokia’s back with their best phone yet - the Nokia Lumia 1020, but can it do enough to steal victory from the Galaxy S4? Read on to find out.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs Nokia Lumia 1020 – Build quality and durability
Surprisingly the Nokia Lumia 1020 looks more like the Lumia 920 than the Lumia 925. It ditches the classy metal edges found on the Lumia 925 and instead has a colourful polycarbonate body. It undoubtedly looks less high end than it might as a result, but it still looks rather stylish and distinctively Nokia.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is also mostly plastic - albeit with a metallic rim around the edge. The build quality seems about equal but we’d argue that the Samsung Galaxy S4 is slightly less stylish than the Nokia Lumia 1020.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs Nokia Lumia 1020 – Display
The Nokia Lumia 1020 has a 4.5 inch 768 x 1280 display with a pixel density of 334 pixels per inch. It uses Gorilla Glass 3 to ensure that it’s strong and scratch resistant and features PureMotion HD+ technology making it readable in sunlight, removing motion blur and making it possible to operate with fingernails or with gloves on.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a 5 inch 1080 x 1920 Super AMOLED display with a pixel density of 441 pixels per inch. It doesn’t have all the fancy PureMotion HD+ technology found on the Lumia 1020, but it’s got a bigger and higher resolution display and like the Lumia 1020 it uses Gorilla Glass 3. The two displays are both brilliant in their own way but we’d say the display on the Samsung Galaxy S4 is still ever so slightly better.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs Nokia Lumia 1020 – Power
The Nokia Lumia 1020 has a 1.5 Ghz dual-core processor and 2GB of RAM, while the Samsung Galaxy S4 has a 1.9 Ghz quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM. The Lumia 1020 might match the Galaxy S4 for RAM but its processor gets blown away, making it an easy victory for the Samsung Galaxy S4.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs Nokia Lumia 1020 – Camera
The camera is where the Nokia Lumia 1020 really shines, as it has a slightly ridiculous 41 megapixel sensor. It also uses a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens and Xenon flash. Plus it has a bunch of shooting modes and picture editing options, such as Cinemagraph, panorama, Nokia Smart Cam and Creative Studio. It can also shoot 1080p video at 30fps and has a secondary 1.2 megapixel front facing camera. All in all, it’s enormously impressive.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 on the other hand has a 13 megapixel main camera and there’s no Xenon flash onboard, instead it uses inferior LED flash. It does at least feature a similarly large number of shooting modes, such as HDR, panorama and ‘Sound & Shot.’
Like the Nokia Lumia 1020, the Samsung Galaxy S4 can also shoot 1080p video at 30fps and it has a 2 megapixel secondary front facing camera. That secondary camera is arguably better than the one on the Lumia 1020, but the main camera just can’t compete. The camera on the Samsung Galaxy S4 is great compared to those on most other smartphones, but the Nokia Lumia 1020 is just in a whole other league.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs Nokia Lumia 1020 – Battery life, memory and connectivity
The Nokia Lumia 1020 has a 2000 mAh battery, which Nokia claims is capable of up to 13.3 hours of talk time over 3G, up to 63 hours of music playback, up to 6.8 hours of video playback and up to 5.5 hours of Wi-Fi browsing time. The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a significantly bigger 2600 mAh battery which should be able to manage up to 17 hours of 3G talk time, up to 62 hours of music playback and up to 370 hours of standby time. So the Galaxy S4 is capable of significantly longer talk time than the Lumia 1020 - though the 1020 edges it for music playback. Overall the Galaxy S4 has the bigger battery and looks to have the stronger battery life.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 has 32GB of built in storage but there’s no micro SD card slot so that can’t be increased. The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a choice of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of built in storage and it then also has a micro SD card slot letting you boost it further. So while neither handset has any shortage of storage the S4 has the most.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 supports Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, Bluetooth 3.0 and NFC. The Samsung Galaxy S4 has all of the same connectivity options, except that it uses Bluetooth 4.0 rather than 3.0 and it also has an infrared port, which allows you for example to control your television with it.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs Nokia Lumia 1020 – Conclusion
Picking a winner between the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the Nokia Lumia 1020 is a very tough thing to do. The Lumia 1020 perhaps has an ever so slightly better build, while the Samsung Galaxy S4 has a slightly better screen. The Samsung Galaxy S4 is also better for battery life, connectivity options and memory - but not by much.
The main differences are the power and the camera. The Samsung Galaxy S4 is by far the most powerful of the two but the Nokia Lumia 1020 features a much better camera. So really it depends on whether you’d rather have the extra power or the superior camera - and whether you’d rather use Windows Phone 8 or Android. Both are brilliant all round phones and while the Lumia 1020 has a far better camera, the one on the Galaxy S4 is still pretty good. Likewise the Lumia 1020 is still reasonably powerful despite being dwarfed by the Galaxy S4. If we had to pick, we’d say that the Samsung Galaxy S4 edges the victory as it won more categories overall, but you really can’t go wrong with either.
