The Lumia 1520 is nothing more than a glorified hand warmer

What do I think of the Nokia Lumia 1520? Well quite frankly I think it's pointless, it's nothing more than a glorified hand warmer. But it's OK, because Nokia will back me up wholeheartedly here.

Let's travel back almost two years, to January 2012. We were in a whirlwind of excess at CES in Las Vegas and it appeared Sin City was bringing the best out of Nokia boss Stephen Elop as he laid into quad-core handsets.

When quizzed about the upcoming flurry of quad-core toting Android smartphones Elop told TechRadar: "You don't need a quad-core phone unless you want to keep your hands warm in your pocket."

And for the next 20 months or so we saw Nokia continue to churn out single and dual-core smartphones while competitors delivered the likes of the LG G2, HTC One and Samsung Galaxy Note 3.

On the quad-core offensive

It's worth noting that Nokia couldn't actually match its Android rivals thanks to the limitations of the Windows Phone platform, which didn't support the four core technology, nor did it allow for phablet size displays until the launch of the Lumia 1520.

But just because the technology becomes available doesn't mean you have to use it, and a couple of months after his Vegas chat with TechRadar, Elop was on the quad-core offensive yet again.

Talking to the Yangcheng Evening News, Elop said quad-core phones were just a waste of battery life - yet here we are now looking a quad-core Nokia handset smack bang in the face.

What the hell, Nokia? Seriously. You bang on about how efficient Windows Phone is on single and dual-core processors and how it doesn't need all that wasteful processing power that four cores offer, just to backtrack and make yourself look silly.

Therefore I'm viewing the launch of the Lumia 1520 as Nokia admitting it was wrong on quad-core. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Third degree burns

That is, unless, it's launched a handset with atrocious battery life and a temperature problem which sees it overheat in a matter of seconds leaving you with third degree burns.

If this is the case then fair play Elop - your points will be well justified. Although you may end up in jail for launching a potentially dangerous smartphone.

I fear though Nokia hasn't included either of these "killer" features in its first quad-core smartphone and in fact has provided us with another run of the mill Windows Phone device which, apart from its full HD screen and sheer size, will be yet another carbon copy experience.

So can we trust anything that comes out of Elop's mouth? Well in the same Vegas-based TechRadar interview he also commented on rumors suggesting Microsoft was looking to take over Nokia.

"The rumors are baseless and it seems certain factions who like to generate rumors are running out of fresh material and [are] recycling the old," he said.

Hmm.

• Find out what else Elop had to say about tablets, Symbian and smartphones last year by reading the full interview with TechRadar