Nokia 9 PureView with 5 Cameras is a Photographer’s Dream Phone

Smartphone cameras have improved massively in recent years. Companies have tried a lot of different approaches and the most popular one thus far has been adding more cameras to improve quality.

Nokia 9 is the end-product of this approach, coming with 5(!) cameras on the back of the phone.

Does adding more cameras actually improve quality? What makes the Nokia 9 good?

Let’s find out.

Design and Display

Design wise the Nokia 9 looks like something from 2018, going with a notchless 18:9 aspect ratio design. That said, it does feature a 6.1″ P-OLED HDR10 display, coming in at QHD+ (2880 x 1440) resolution.

There’s Gorilla Glass 5 on the front and the back, no Gorilla Glass 6 unfortunately.

On the plus side, there’s IP67 water and dust resistance, and an in-display fingerprint reader on the Nokia 9 to keep up with the times. There’s also AI face unlock if that’s your thing.

The back is the most noticeable thing about the Nokia 9, with its 5 camera setup, LED flash and the Time of Flight camera for depth sensing.

Internals and Storage

Nokia is sticking with the tried and tested Snapdragon 845 processor for the 9, and it shouldn’t be a problem. The chip is good enough to chew through anything you throw at it. Granted an 855 supports 5G, but a lack of 5G in most regions in the world means that it won’t be an issue.

There’s 6GB of RAM with 128 GB of internal storage.

Nokia 9 PureView is an AndroidOne phone, meaning it comes with pure Android 9.0 Pie and gets the latest updates as they arrive. There’s no bloatware either.

Cameras

Now comes the focal point of Nokia 9, its 5 cameras.

All 5 cameras are 12MP, using an f/1.8 Zeiss lens. Three cameras are Monochrome, meaning they only capture black and white colors, while the remaining two are RGB sensors.

The cameras aren’t designed with special shooting modes in mind. It’s made purely for photography enthusiasts, who like to tinker with RAW images, changing up the lighting, improving highlights etc.

Images from all 5 cameras are stacked together to produce a single image, offering up to 12.4 stops of lighting, the same as a DSLR camera. The monochrome sensors let in 2.8x more light than regular sensors and produce actual black and white images instead of removing color from normal images.

There are no telephoto or wide-angle lenses as Nokia didn’t want a camera bump on the back of the phone.

Normally, smartphone cameras focus on a single subject and blur out everything for the bokeh effect. Nokia 9 won’t do that and will produce an image with 1200 points of depth data with a uniform 12MP resolution.

This will allow realistic bokeh, not the kind you see on other smartphones, with the effect getting stronger the further something is from the subject.

The front camera is a single 20MP shooter which uses pixel binning to produce 5MP images with better lighting and detail.

Battery and Charging

Nokia 9 PureView will feature a 3,320 mAh battery with fast charging (supports both Quick Charge 3.0 and USB Power Delivery) and wireless charging.

Price and Availability

Aside from Xiaomi Mi 9, Nokia 9 is the cheapest flagship phone announced yet, coming in at $699, just $50 less than the Samsung Galaxy S10e.

It will be available from March, with pre-order open for select countries from today. Nokia 9 will be produced in limited quantities and the company won’t be producing more phones after the stock runs out.

Nokia 9 PureView Specifications

• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 845
• GPU: Adreno 630
• OS: Android 9.0 (Pie)
• Networks: 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE
• Design:
  • In-display fingerprint sensor
  • IP 67 Dust and Water resistance
• Display:
  • 6.0 inch P-OLED with QHD+ (2880 x 1440) resolution, 18:9 ratio (~538ppi)
• Memory:
  • RAM: 6 GB RAM
  • Internal: 128 GB
  • Card slot: No
• Camera:
  • Primary: 5x 12 MP, f/1.8 (2x RGB & 3x B/W cameras)
  • TOF camera
  • Secondary: 20 MP, f/2.0, HDR
• Battery: 3,320 mAh, fast charging, wireless charging
• Colors: Midnight Blue
• Price: $699