Image Credit: TechRadar Early Verdict The new Nokia 9 PureView is a commitment to a single idea: with five lenses taking one HD...
Image Credit: TechRadar
Early Verdict
The new Nokia 9 PureView is a commitment to a single idea: with five lenses taking one HDR photo, you can add the most detail ever to regular photos. With an otherwise respectable, but not impressive list of specs, Nokia is going after mobile photo fans with high-quality photos and software, but will that be enough?For
- Takes high-quality photos
- Low price for a flagship
- In-display fingerprint scanner
Against
- Doesn't have the latest power
- No headphone jack
All five of its cameras have the same aperture and field-of-view, and when users take a photo, the entire array snaps a shot at the same time and composites them into one image. Think of the Nokia 9 PureView camera as HDR on steroids.
Update: We been testing out the Nokia 9 camera since MWC 2019 and have included new images and samples to show how photos compare to other flagship cameras. We also tested out the fingerprint sensor. We'll finish up reviewing it after more testing this week.
It's very different from today's phone camera doctrine that uses multiple cameras – typically ultra-wide, main and telephoto lenses – giving users the ability to seamlessly zoom, from way out to way in. Nokia doesn't do this. Instead, it offers something new with its five cameras.
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It's
a unique philosophy that compromises on less than you'd expect. Sure,
the Nokia 9 lacks an optical zoom, but the massive (by resolution and
file size) photos should let you just digitally zoom with better clarity
than most other phones.
Unfortunately, the Nokia 9 PureView
doesn't quite have the best internal specs on the market, so the phone
is a bit of a gamble. Will phone shutterbugs come flocking? Will the
unique camera array prove groundbreaking enough to inspire imitation? Or
will the design be a curiosity that the market doesn't embrace?
However
it shakes out, HMD Global (the Finnish firm now behind Nokia handsets)
is hedging its bets: the Nokia 9 PureView will only be a limited run, so
it may not be as easy to find as other flagship phones.
Nokia 9 PureView release date and price
- $699 / £549 / AED 2,299 (around AU$980)
- You can currently pre-order in some regions
The
Nokia 9 PureView price is $699 / £549 / AED 2,299 (around AU$980),
making it comfortably cheaper than other camera phone powerhouses such
as the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus, Google Pixel 3 XL, Huawei Mate 20 Pro and iPhone XS Max.
It's
already out in the US, but retailers like Amazon, Best Buy and B&H
Photo are sold out – for now. B&H Photo says it'll be back in stock
in late March, while Best Buy is counting on an April 5 re-supply.
In
the UK you can currently pre-order the phone from HMD Global with an
estimated delivery date of April 1. It's not clear whether the Nokia 9
will come to Australia though, as it's not currently listed on the
company's Australian site.
Image Credit: TechRadar
Design and display
The
Nokia 9 PureView is distinguishable from other flagships on both sides.
Its front display lacks a notch, instead maintaining conservative
bezels above and below.
The back, of course, has the five cameras,
plus a flash and ToF (time of flight) sensor, for a wildly distinctive
seven-hole radial pattern that looks a bit like the Blackberry logo – or
something very close to an Arachnid spider.
If the hubbub
generated by leaked photos of the camera array is anything to go by, the
phone's lens spread will turn heads. Whether it's attractive or not is
largely to taste, although we found it looked better in the flesh versus
in early photos.
You can usually tell if someone points their
phone at you to take a photo, but the Nokia 9 PureView's plethora of
lenses makes it much more conspicuous. And it's honestly a bit
unsettling to get photographed by a gadget sporting nearly a spider's
worth of 'eyes'.
That's a lot of cameras. Image Credit: TechRadar
It’s
a relief, then, that the rest of the phone looks typical. You'll find
the power/lock key and volume rocker easily accessible on the right of
the phone, while on the base a USB-C port resides alongside a microphone
and speaker.
There is, however, no headphone jack, as HMD Global follows the flagship trend of ditching the aging port.
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With
Gorilla Glass 5 on the front and back sandwiching a metal frame (milled
from a single block of 6000 series aluminum), the Nokia 9 PureView
looks like a premium phone, but the back glass does feel a bit cheaper
when you tap on it.
Good
news, it is IP67 rated, providing water and dust resistance which
should help it survive being briefly submerged up to 1 meter.
The
Nokia 9 PureView measures 155 x 75 x 8mm and tips the scales at 172g,
ensuring you feel its presence in your hand. The curved rear glass does
help it nestle in the palm, but this is a large phone and will need two
hands for many tasks as it offers up little in the way of grip.
Camera bump-haters, take note: the Nokia 9's lenses sits flush with the back of the phone for a seamless rear edge.
While
this is likely easier to do without any telephoto lenses, it's a better
look for the phone than a seven-hole cluster raised above the rear
surface.
The
Nokia 9 PureView's display is a 5.99-inch 1440 x 2880 pOLED screen,
which is as high-resolution as almost every other flagship on the
market.
It
looked bright, clear and colorful during our hands on time with the
phone, and it should be great for viewing the high-resolution photos
taken by the multi-camera system.
There
is an additional feature hiding under the display too, with a
fingerprint scanner built into the screen. The Nokia 9 PureView comes
with the commonly used optical reader, rather than the ultrasonic tech
in the Galaxy S10, but it's still good to see a hot flagship feature make its way into a Nokia.
In
our tests, the fingerprint sensor works reasonably well most times, but
there have been instances in which it refuses to recognize our
thumbprint after several tries. The technology is cutting-edge and
therefore early.
What's
a little more disappoint to see is the slightly bezel-heavy design (by
2019's smartphone standards at least) employed here, which doesn't make
the front of the Nokia 9 PureView look quite as futuristic as its rear
camera array - but those who aren't fans of the notch or 'punch-hole'
styles may be pleased with the more traditional look.
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Camera
Ah yes – the cameras.
A
little clarification up front: while the Nokia 9 PureView does indeed
have five rear cameras, only two are in color. These occupy the central
and bottom spots in the array, with the other three lenses – all
monochrome – arranged equally around the color ones.
Nokia 9 PureView (Image credit: TechRadar)
Nokia 9 photo comparison: Nokia 9
Google Pixel 3 (Image credit: TechRadar)
Nokia 9 photo comparison: Google Pixel 3
iPhone XS Max (Image credit: TechRadar)
Nokia 9 photo comparison: iPhone XS Max
Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus (Image credit: TechRadar)
Nokia 9 photo comparison: Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus
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This orientation is precise and important, Nokia maintains, which ensures that all cameras contribute their images just so. Likewise, the five cameras are identically-spec'd at 12MP and f/1.8 with Zeiss optics.
That sounds low considering the escalating megapixels in phones over the last few years (with plenty of phones reaching for the 48MP camera
high-water mark). But Nokia customers didn't appreciate the massive
photos, and certainly didn't enjoy the correspondingly massive file
sizes, a Nokia rep told TechRadar.
The company predicts users
will be satisfied with 12MP photos, which shouldn't take up too much
space if users shoot using only one of the Nokia 9's lenses.
Count 'em. Image Credit: TechRadar
Because,
yes, those five-lens photos are large (from 25MB to 40MB) - which is
why you can toggle depth mode on or off. But if you do turn it on,
expect "up to 1,200 layers of depth data" to be captured, and by using
machine learning it can calculate almost an infinite number of layers
between 7cm and 40 meters away from the lens.
When in depth mode,
the Nokia 9 PureView captures at least one picture from each of five
lens at the same time, and depending on scene it may capture up to four
shots on each.
It
means the final image could end up holding anything from 60MP to 240MP
of information when shot in the RAW 'DNG' format - providing a huge
amount of editing scope for professional photographers.
If
you're not capturing your shots in RAW, the Nokia 9 PureView will fuse
all of these shots into one, highly-detailed 12MP photograph.
In
short, the Nokia 9 PureView is the first smartphone that's capable of
simultaneously capturing pictures from five cameras and fusing them into
one single image.
Combining a five-camera photo is a different
approach to fidelity, essentially using AI to pick the best parts of
each pic to form an image that could produce photos that are truer to
life. The cameras auto-adjust exposure across the screen and, all
combined, let in 10 times more light than a single color sensor of the
same type, Nokia claims.
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It's easy to toggle depth mode on and off. Image Credit: TechRadar
It's
a lot to boast, and with good reason: the phone's photo capabilities
are by far the biggest feature that will distinguish the Nokia 9 from
the competition. But the device does offer a lot to mobile photographers
on top of the camera cluster, with a lot to tinker with in Adobe’s
mobile Lightroom app along with compatibility with Google Photos' new
depth-adding features.
While the Nokia 9 doesn’t have a similarly
impressive array for front-facing features - it packs a lone 20MP lens
in the top bar. However, our firsts tests show that it offers blown out
backgrounds with no signs of HDR. It's also slow to save these selfies.
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So
how do these cameras actually perform? In our brief time, we found the
multi-camera setup produced a ton of detail in shots, producing
good-looking photos, even when left unedited.
We're
still spending time with the photos in photo-editing software – all
that extra detail gave us a lot to play with in the Lightroom app -
noticeably more than, say, photos from an iPhone XS.
Nokia
might be leaning on its partnership with Adobe, but given how
tried-and-true the latter’s mobile photo editing app is, we don’t mind
at all.
We'll put the Nokia 9 PureView cameras and software
through their paces in our full review to see if its utterly unique
photography setup produces images a cut above the competition.
The
Pro Camera UI in the camera app has also been updated for the Nokia 9
PureView, with HMD Global extending the range of the values (brightness,
white balance, shutter speed etc) in response to user feedback.
What you lookin' at? Image Credit: TechRadar
Specs and performance
Anyone who needs the absolute latest and greatest specs in their phone should think twice about the Nokia 9 PureView.
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It
packs 2018’s leading Qualcomm chipset, the Snapdragon 845, which is a
curious choice for a phone released in 2019 that will compete with
devices packing the Snapdragon 855.
That
doesn't mean the phone will under perform – the Snapdragon 845 is
plenty fast, and considering phones with it were released up until the
end of 2018, that means the Nokia 9 is only a few months out of date.
In our brief time with the new phone, the chip was plenty fast for zipping around the interface and taking quick shots.
But
the Nokia 9 PureView won't just have a stock Snapdragon 845; it turns
out the chip can only handle images from three lenses simultaneously for
HDR-like processing. The phone uses a dedicated Light Lux Capacitor,
which is designed for bespoke multi-camera setups, to wrangle imagery
from all five of its rear lenses at once, allowing it to process 240MP
of photo before feeding it into the Snapdragon processor.
Otherwise,
the phone packs a respectable 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which
should store quite a few five-camera shots. The phone comes with Android
9 Pie out of the box, which is expected but still nice to see from a
flagship.
The Nokia 9 PureView's 3,320mAh battery should be
enough for a full day's charge, though we’re extremely curious if
shooting (and processing) five-lens images will significantly drain the
battery – something we'll pay attention to in our full review. If so,
the wireless charging may come in handy to juice it back up during the
day.
Image Credit: TechRadar
Early verdict
The
Nokia 9 PureView is an impressive device built for photographers on the
go, and if you’re truly committed to this format, this could be the
phone for you. Its specs are respectable but not outstanding, which is
fine for a phone priced hundreds of dollars below the top-spec'd
handsets on the market.
But
whether it will be easy to pick up Nokia’s latest phone is another
issue, given its limited production. That alone suggests to us that the
company knows it’s a device for a niche crowd.
On
the other hand, the phones we hold in highest photo-esteem are the
top-tier devices with the high price tag to afford all the best
equipment. $699 is a much easier number to swallow than $799, $899 or
$999 for the best devices from Google, Samsung and Apple.
Nokia
isn’t the only brand trying to distinguish itself with photography;
Sony’s Xperia flagships also seem to be investing in nice screens and
cameras. But Sony hasn’t gone the distance to stuff the Xperia 1's backside with five lenses.
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it’s
exciting for HMD to stick its neck out for mobile photography that
isn’t following other flagships in stuffing as many different lenses as
possible into their phones. Instead, the Nokia 9 PureVire is committed
to taking one kind of shot as best it can. Whether its photo quality
outweighs the utility it gives up will have to wait for our review.
MWC
(Mobile World Congress) is the world's largest showcase for the mobile
industry, stuffed full of the newest phones, tablets, wearables and
more. TechRadar is reporting live from Barcelona all week to bring you
the very latest from the show floor. Head to our dedicated MWC 2019 hub to see all the new releases, along with TechRadar's world-class analysis and buying advice about your next phone.
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