Six-Inch Nokia Lumia 1520 “Bandit” Photographed in the Wild

Only a few days ago we got a glimpse of the rumored Nokia Sirius, a 10.1-inch Windows RT-powered tablet. Today over on Windows Phone Central, an alleged photo of another rumored Nokia device has been posted. This time around, it’s the Windows Mobile Nokia Lumia 1520, codenamed the Nokia Bandit, and it is huge.

And when I say “huge,” I don’t mean that it’s, like, a big deal or something. It’s just literally humungous. That’s right: if this photo is the real deal, it would seem that Nokia’s next gadget is an entrant in the dreaded “phablet” category.

According to the post, the Lumia 1520 will offer up a six-inch, 1080p screen, a 20 megapixel camera, and a Qualcomm quad-core Snapdroagon CPU. It’s speculated that the Bandit will be available through AT&T sometime this November, though all of this information is strictly in the “unconfirmed” column, so take all this with a grain of salt. But, for the purposes of this post, let’s assume that this is accurate.

For one thing, it would clearly show that Nokia is looking to corner the market on Windows-powered mobile devices. At this point, I know that a few other tech companies put out Windows Mobile products, but for the most part, my mind goes straight to Nokia and its Lumia line. If a 6-inch mega-phone is, indeed, in the works from Nokia, it would represent the first—or at least the most prominent—example of a phablet running Windows Mobile. Now, whether or not this is a good thing is another question entirely.

If you want to know how I feel about it—and if you’re reading this, I guess you do—I pretty much hate the whole idea of phablets. I think they’re too big to be used practically as phones, and too small to get anything substantial done as tablets. They are “just right” to be totally stupid. And let’s not ignore the fact that the word “phablet” is in and of itself entirely obnoxious. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that “phablet” has joined other garbage contributions to the English language like “selfie” and “twerking” in Oxford Dictoinaries.

But while I think that phablets are supremely dumb, it seems I may be in the minority. Early this year, market research firm IHS iSuppli reported that shipments of mobile phones with displays of 5-inches and up were predicted to hit 60.4 million units in 2013. By 2016, forecasts the report, phablet sales will hit 146 million units. To me, that sounds like utter lunacy. But someone has to be buying these things, otherwise why would companies like Samsung, Sony, and now Nokia be making so damn many of them?

I’ve only ever seen one person using a phablet, but then, maybe the phablet has yet to catch on here in Minneapolis. But it doesn’t matter what I think: it would seem that Nokia knows something I don’t, and we’re likely to get yet another phablet before the year is through.

So what do you think? Is a six-inch humungo-phone really something the world needs? Will the Nokia Bandit turn fortunes around for Windows Mobile?