Nokia Lumia 1320 review

A capable phablet, but is it already obsolete?

Nokia Lumia 1320 review
Nokia wants us to enjoy this budget moment

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With such a big and bright 6-inch display, the Nokia Lumia 1320 makes for a decent video player – though again, you'll be needing a hefty microSD card, as 5.5GB of free internal storage won't hold a lot of films.

Of course, with no pre-installed storefront for video content, it might be a challenge to watch such videos anyway. You'll need to head to the Windows Phone Store and download the Xbox Video app if you want a 'native' video source of this kind.

Mix Radio

Meanwhile there's not even an official YouTube app, so you'll have to rely on Vimeo and Netflix for your video-streaming needs.

Nokia may not have a video store service of its own, but it is pretty strong with music. Head into the (fairly) recently rebranded MixRadio app and you get access to hundreds of hours worth of free tunes.

With no sign-up and no subscription fee, you can stream or download playlists of music based around carefully curated themes and genres – or even a trio of your preferred artists.

It remains a generous offering, although you may find the lack of ability to select specific artists or skip more than six times an hour somewhat restrictive.

Nokia no longer offers its own MP3 store, but you can access Microsoft's own Xbox Music service through the standard Windows Phone Store, or by downloading the dedicated app.

These apps will doubtless come as standard on future Nokia handsets, and the current multimedia loose ends will be tied up.

Xbox music

Right now, it just seems as if the Lumia 1320 has arrived at an unfortunate time of transition between the various Nokia and Microsoft media services.

One media store front that remains, of course, is the Xbox Games collection. As always, you can browse, purchase, and access your games from here – many of which will have been enhanced with Xbox Live achievements.

That's the idea, anyway. Look a little closer and you'll see that Windows Phone is still lagging way behind iOS and even Android when it comes to a strong mobile gaming environment.

The Store is filled with third rate freebies, woefully belated iOS conversions, and trashy Flappy Bird clones.

As for the gameplay experience itself, the Nokia Lumia 1320 acquitted itself just fine during my tests. Properly optimised (or at least pleasantly vibrant) games like Subway Surfers look and play great.

Unfortunately, a lot of these games simply haven't been upscaled for large-screen devices. Jet-pack Joyride looks like a blurry mess, for example.

Jetpack

Put simply, Windows Phone still isn't worthy of the Xbox branding it so proudly wears. But that's not Nokia's fault, and the Lumia 1320 offers as full a gaming experience as it's possible to get on the platform.

This being a Windows Phone device, you also get 7GB of free SkyDrive – sorry, OneDrive – cloud storage space in which to store your files.

You can automatically upload photos, but there's no media integration, so you won't be able to view any video files stored in the cloud unless you head to the Windows Phone Store and download the OneDrive app.

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