Nokia touts rich recording abilities of their Lumia 1020, put it up against competitors in latest video

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

We all know that Nokia Lumias tend to record the best audio in addition to photos and video. That’s due to their inclusion of high-amplitude audio capture (HAAC) microphones on their various devices, including their entry level Lumias.

Indeed, the Lumia 1020 has three microphones (like the 920) all positioned for ideal recording, except now Nokia has enabled full stereo ability—a feature that will be coming to other 9xx Lumias in the future via an update.

In a new video posted to their YouTube channel, Nokia puts the 1020 up against their competitors (we assume the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4) in a DJ contest. The phones were positioned exactly the same and only leveled for volume.

Granted, we’ve seen these comparisons numerous times ever since the 920 was released (we even did one against the HTC 8X), but this time with the 1020, Nokia is really taking the lead in promoting their rich audio recording abilities and tying it into the most common thing: recording clips from live performances.  Nokia and Verizon actually did start with the Lumia 928 to show this feature in various commercials and ads, but it now looks like the 1020 will have even more emphasis on this technology.

Source: YouTube

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

29 Comments
  • Competitor S and A. Gee, who could they be? Fanboys of Competitor A should be happy the device sounded better than S.
  • Suddenly, the L1020 is starting to look good :P
  • Sounds good to me.
  • CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW???
  • LOL
  • Finally! I really want Stereo recording on my Lumia 920. When this update is set to come?  Please
  • It's not just software but hardware changes. so likely not to come to the 920. Just the 1020 and future flagships I think.
  • Na, it will come to the others 9xx phones. Just read the article:
    "Indeed, the Lumia 1020 has three microphones (like the 920) all positioned for ideal recording, except now Nokia has enabled full stereo ability—a feature that will be coming to other 9xx Lumias in the future via an update"
  • Nokia needs more ads on the TV and on road than more comparison videos on youtube.
  • I am sure someone at Nokia is working hard on wind noise cancellation. That would be wunderbar!
  • The russel brand video isn't working.
  • ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆
  • +1020
  • About time, they should have talked more about this feature on the revealing of the 1020.
  • It's not something that's easy to show off unless you've actually tried recording audio in a loud environment with a phone. Even my 920 blows away any other phone out there, can't wait to hear the 1020's stereo recording.
  • ironically, Nokia showed this exact video at the Zoomparty last week.  Had four purity pro headphones hooked up to a tv.  It's really hard to show the difference over regular speakers but over the headphones, the differences were stark as all hell.
  • I wasn't expecting much there but that was impressive
  • no 64GB in the US? no sale...
  • Nice that they remember to promo the audio. Audio is very important aspect too in videos.
  • 3 microphones on Lumia 920? And where are they?
  • One at top near the headset jack, two at the bottom on either side of the usb port.
  • See the grills? They hide microphones. There's a small grill up top.
  • Good information.  I honeslty didn't think the 920 had three Microphones, as the technical data from Nokia only said two. The same sheets from Nokia also stated the 925 and 1020 only had dual microphones, yet listed the 928 as having three microphones. 
     
    I am wondering if this was an oversight or a miscommunication with marketing since they do use the 'array' to monitor sound levels and direction, yet as expected the device only uses two for recording. It might also be that the microphones on the 928 are clearly visible due to the back, bottom, top locations that are much more visible.  
  • Competitor S: "S"amsung GS3
    Competitor A: "A"pple iphone 5
  • Really?
  • yup...pause the video at 10 secs and look carefully....
  • It can't be, that would be such a scandal ...
  • pause the video at 10 secs and look carefully....
  • my next Windows Phone will definitly be a Nokia for the Haac technology alone! took some videos during a concert on HTC 8x and was shocked as to how bad the sound quality was when I got home... had to delete ALL of the videos that I recorded during the concert...