I've been playing around with a 1020 for a few days, that article is really lame.
That first picture is showing it with the weird camera case accessory, you wouldn't normally carry the phone around with that attached. It looks just like it does in the ads in person. It fits my pocket fine (less awkward than the 'chin' on some Androids) and the weight and balance are comfortable for reading and making phone calls. I never got on the "shitty screens with crazy high DPI" bandwagon so I'm satisfied with 330ppi OLED. I'm not gonna give up OLED to get another 200ppi.
The slow cycle time is annoying but I've gotten used to it as a standard issue with cameraphones, it's not much worse than others I've used. There's a burst mode app so the lag doesn't affect your ability to do action photos. The 5MP downsample is a feature, you wouldn't normally use a photo bigger than that for small-screen display, and the non-downsampled image is still saved for printing or crops (there is a nice in-camera crop tool that adjusts the area the image is cropped from).
Honestly the biggest issue I had was that there isn't a light meter or exposure preview so it's hard to do manual exposure control when taking flash-less photos in very dark settings that have lights in the background. The multiple camera apps are an odd choice but not actually an issue in practice.
Slow cycle time is not standard issue. Cycle-time is non-existent on my iPhone 5. Low-cycle time became a key selling point in DSLRs and P&S cameras 5+ years ago. It's jarring to experience it in 2013.
That first picture is showing it with the weird camera case accessory, you wouldn't normally carry the phone around with that attached. It looks just like it does in the ads in person. It fits my pocket fine (less awkward than the 'chin' on some Androids) and the weight and balance are comfortable for reading and making phone calls. I never got on the "shitty screens with crazy high DPI" bandwagon so I'm satisfied with 330ppi OLED. I'm not gonna give up OLED to get another 200ppi.
The slow cycle time is annoying but I've gotten used to it as a standard issue with cameraphones, it's not much worse than others I've used. There's a burst mode app so the lag doesn't affect your ability to do action photos. The 5MP downsample is a feature, you wouldn't normally use a photo bigger than that for small-screen display, and the non-downsampled image is still saved for printing or crops (there is a nice in-camera crop tool that adjusts the area the image is cropped from).
Honestly the biggest issue I had was that there isn't a light meter or exposure preview so it's hard to do manual exposure control when taking flash-less photos in very dark settings that have lights in the background. The multiple camera apps are an odd choice but not actually an issue in practice.