File this under the category of better late than never. AT&T has finally released the Lumia Denim update for the popular Lumia 1020 today. The update brings things like Cortana and other improvements into arguably one of the best smartphone/camera combinations on the market. Be sure to check out my Field Guide to Lumia Denim for a run down of all of the updates that are in the release. Frustratingly the Lumia 1020 has received the Lumia Denim update through many carriers globally, most notably O2 in England. AT&T, who exclusively sold the phone here in the US, has been painfully slow in rolling out Denim as a whole and many questioned if the 1020 would actually get the update. In a positive way, it has been answered.
There are a huge number of updates in Lumia Denim which for Windows Phone users will benefit from having on their devices. These include things like Cortana, the personal assistant in Windows Phone (and coming in Windows 10), Live Folders, consumer VPN, SMS merging and forwarding and improvements in mobile site rendering in Internet Explorer.
As a customer of AT&T, I have been plenty critical of their handling of rolling out Denim on their devices. The Lumia 830 has in effect Lumia .5 and still can’t take advantage of the new Lumia Camera app and features with no update in sight. The same is true for the uber popular Lumia 635. Only the flagship Lumia 1520 has seen the proper, full update to Denim. The pace at which updates are rolled out under Windows 10 should improve. Given that Lumia Denim was released in November last year, any improvement over a 6 month wait will be good.
If you have automatic update enabled on your Lumia 1020 then you may have already received the Denim update today. You can always go to Settings>Phone Update to check for an update manually.
The Denim update broke the camera on my Lumia 1020. It simply won’t load. I did several soft resets, then was advised by Microsoft support to back up my phone and do a hard reset, then use the software recovery tool. It set it back to Cyan and then pushed the Denim update back out. None of it worked to get my camera functioning. Luckily I had Geek Squad protection on it so I’m getting a replacement but it’s pretty crappy that the software update broke the phone in the first place, especially since I bought the 1020 specifically for the camera.