The Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2019 have been billed as one for the “Folding phones” but might just have turned a new corner with Nokia announcing their latest flagship, the Nokia 9 PureView which though, from the front, looks almost indistinguishable from the recent slew of Android-powered rivals yet still managed to attract a lot of attention partly due to its many stacked array of camera.
Flip over the other side of the page and HMD Global, the Finnish company that owns and sells smartphones under the Nokia brand, might just have scooped the “Multiple camera award” with the launch of its latest flagship, the Nokia 9 Pureview which comes with an unprecedented number of rear cameras all arranged in a circular pattern.
It has a 6-inch OLED display protected by Gorilla Glass 5 to avoid scratches and scuffs, a 20MP front-facing selfie camera and runs Android 9.0 Pie. There’s also an in-display fingerprint scanner, like the Samsung Galaxy S10, Huawei Mate 20 Pro and OnePlus 6T.
Nokia 9 PureView includes two RGB f/1.8 12-megapixels sensors and three monochrome f/1.8 12-megapixel sensors with each of the five lenses on the back of the handset has a different exposure level to capture even more information each time you hit the shutter button.
There’s also a dual-tone LED flash and a Time Of Flight (ToF) sensor for video capture too. It has an 18:9 aspect ratio and a 2K resolution, which should be more than enough to view those stunning cameras.
You get to click and save images in JPEG, as well as RAW. According to the company, RAW images typically take up between 30MB – 50MB of memory. There’s 128GB of built-in storage, which should be enough to handle your many Valentine and after-lecture snaps though.
There’s a dual-purpose secondary SIM card/MicroSD card slot, so as long as you’re not too bothered by having multiple lines on your new Nokia, you can add up to 512GB additional storage for your photos.
The Nokia 9 PureView is powered by the Qualcomm SnapDragon 855, coupled with 6GB of RAM and a new imaging co-processor developed by Light. This new chipset helps to take some of the strain off the SnapDragon 855 to avoid its 3,320mAh battery life billed to last a day and a half battery life suffering.
The Tech Behind Five Cameras
Nokia explained that all five cameras will fire each time you press the shutter option, that means, you have a single 60-megapixel photograph with panorama outputs trotting west of more than 240-megapixels.
Obviously, smartphone camera nowadays does not seem to be all about the number of megapixels, as some smartphones with modest camera megapixel often output pretty cool photographs. The Nokia 9 PureView, however, goes beyond by allowing for image processing onto canvases and posters though, Nokia explains it might take a while little before the full-resolution images are processed and ready to edit.
That’s a lot of storage involved. It means you don’t have to decide exactly what the final image will look like when you’re composing your shot. You can always overhaul the entire photograph at a later date and of course, save them in multiple different options.
So, you know what that means? Large image outputs, More storage space needed…
It would be crazy to have 60 images on my smartphone all taken with the Nokia 9 PureView and all totally way more than 3.6GB spent on images clicks alone. However, Nokia concedes that it will have a smaller 2MB thumbnail for every image click which will be available instantaneously in Google Photos.
You don’t know how I love those 2MB files!
Any Interesting Catch?
Definitely, one of the most interesting features is the ability to adjust the focus of a photograph after it has been taken. While most flagship only allows for blur adjustment behind the subject of the photograph, Nokia allows you to completely change what object is the focal subject of the image. Using the preinstalled Google Photos app, you can make the background out of focus to highlight the foreground or vice versa.
According to HMD Global, the Nokia 9 PureView is able to focus on subjects anywhere from 7cm to 40 metres away from its rear-mounted cameras. While most rival smartphones will allow for up to 10 layers in the depth map generated by their multi-camera systems, Nokia 9 PureView has a jaw-dropping 1,200 layers.
That’s way too high man!
Cinematography at its best?
If you were hoping for some interesting, quality and crazy video effects for your Instagram and Snapchat videos with video output like never before, well, you are about to be disappointed here as with all the hype surrounding the Nokia 9 PureView and its array of cameras, you only get a single lens for video capture, though in 4K, I wouldn’t still be taking any explanation whatsoever for this mishap.
Though the Nokia 9 PureView is rated IP67 for dust and water resistance, which means it should be able to take high-resolution depth-map photos in the water, it does not mean am going to use it underwater FOR NOW!. There’s also Qi wireless charging – but quite alarming and not-so-consumer-friendly..there’s NO HEADPHONE JACK.
Please, who say my headphone Jack? I just lost it! *Sobs*
So, if you want to listen to music you’ll be forced to use Bluetooth or USB-C headphones.
Con-Clusion
Honestly, the design of the new camera looks a lot like a spider’s eye. Nokia says the cameras have been arranged in that particular pattern in part because it leaves enough space for the 3,320mAh battery cell, though my big fingers are still likely to cover the cameras when taken images in landscape mode.
No certain price though speculations point towards $818 price tag, roughly around #296,000 Nigerian Naira.
So, in the land of smartphone flagships and in the time of magic, that’s the Nokia 9 PureView review for you. Any thoughts on what should have been or is definitely spot on? Let’s talk over it in the OTHER ROOM (comment section).