Nokia 9 Pureview: Features | Pricing | Specs

Nokia 9 Pureview

• Display

  5.99 inches

  2880 x 1440

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• Storage

  128GB

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• Battery size

  3,320 mAh

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Nokia's upcoming Nokia 9 Pureview smartphone looks to redefine smartphone photography with a staggering 5 rear lenses and a highly competitive price.

Since its re-emergence in the mobile scene, by way of HMD Global, Nokia's primary market for smartphones has been in the budget and mid-price spaces, producing phones with superb design but relatively little power.

When it has dabbled in the premium space, the results have been slightly less impressive for the asking price. Not that the Nokia 8 or Nokia 8 Sirocco were bad phones; they just compared poorly with the leading flagships of the time.

Nokia appears to be getting really serious about flagship phones for 2019 in the form of the Nokia 9 Pureview, a phone that combines serious camera optics with plenty of power.

Design

• 5.99-inch display
• In-screen fingerprint scanner
• No headphone jack

• Read more on the Nokia 9 Pureview's design

  The most striking part of the Nokia 9 Pureview's design has to be the five-camera array at the back, making it look unlike any other phone on the market. We'll get into camera specifics in a moment, but on its own merits, the Nokia 9 Pureview has a nice premium design that lines up well with Nokia's other existing handsets.

  One interesting aspect of the Nokia 9 Pureview's construction, given it's a premium phone, is that you can only get it in a single colour. Most premium flagships offer a few colour choices, but if you want the Nokia 9 Pureview, you had better like blue.

  What's interesting about the Nokia 9 Pureview's design is that it Nokia's dodged the whole issue of having a notch, or a teardrop or even a "hole punch" camera in the front of the display.

  How do you do that and still keep taking selfies? By going truly old school and instead opting for a thicker top bezel to hide the phone's front-facing camera. Opinions on bezels vary by user, of course, so you may find it charmingly retro, or possibly just a little old-fashioned.

  The Nokia 9 joins the growing group of phones that use an in-glass fingerprint sensor, so all you have to do is tap on the display to unlock it securely.

  The Nokia 8 Sirocco lacked a headphone socket and the Nokia 9 Pureview is essentially its successor. That means that it too lacks a standard headphone socket, although Nokia is providing a USB adaptor in the box if wired headphones are still your preference.

Camera

• An astonishing 5 rear cameras

• Read more on the Nokia 9 Pureview's camera

  The cameras on the Nokia 9 Pureview are going to be what Nokia markets its new flagship on and it's not hard to see why.

  Just by itself, the 5-lens array is eye-catching, but it's what you can do with the set of 12MP lenses -- and all the lenses on the back of the Nokia 9 Pureview feature 12MP sensors -- can do. Just 2 of the lenses are RGB sensors, with 3 monochrome sensors, and when you take a photo, they all fire to capture different elements of the scene in front of you before automatically stitching them together into the best possible image.

  The test images Nokia's release to date certainly seem to back up its boasts of having industry leading photographic capabilities, but we'll have to put it through some more robust tests before coming to a definite conclusion. There's certainly a lot of scope for good performance, however.

Performance

• Snapdragon 845 rather than Snapdragon 855
• Android One for quick updates

• Read more on the Nokia 9 Pureview's performance

  Most of 2019's flagship Android phones are opting for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 as their processor of choice, but this isn't the way Nokia has gone. Instead, it's opting for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 as the processor of choice for the Nokia 9 Pureview.

  That could leave the Nokia 9 Pureview as a fast phone, but one that's not quite as nimble as 2019's nimblest.

  The use of the Snapdragon 845 also means that the Nokia 9 Pureview isn't a 5G-capable handset. Nokia has plenty of form in releasing point upgrade versions of its phones, so it wouldn't be surprising to see a Nokia 9.1 Pureview emerge later in the year with 5G connectivity, although only Nokia knows for sure what its plans are there.

  Like most of its 2018 range, the Nokia 9 Pureview is an Android One device. That's Google's program for phones with minimal software differences from "clean" Android, guaranteed to see at least two years' worth of updates. While Nokia's 2018 phones have seen updates at varying times, it's still a better state of affairs than a phone that might never see any updates at all.

  One limiting factor for the Nokia 9 Pureview is that it comes with 128GB of onboard storage, but there's no support for microSD storage expansion. Given the camera array can shoot at up to an impressive 240MP per picture, you could quickly exhaust its storage if you're not careful.

Battery

• 3,320mAh battery
• Fast wired charging

• Read more on the Nokia 9 Pureview's battery

  The Nokia 9 Pureview's 3320mAh battery isn't huge by flagship standards, although it's not quite as small as, say, on most iPhone models. Still, we're curious to see how well the Nokia 9 Pureview lasts after any kind of intense photographic session. There's little doubt that this is a phone pitched at the snap-happy crowd, but that's not always the least battery-intensive activity to throw at a phone.

  At least you'll have charging choices, with support for both wired and wireless Qi charging.

Pricing and availability

• Surprisingly affordable at $US699
• Australian launch TBC.

While it does have some cost-cutting corners with the use of an older flagship processor and sealed storage, it's that camera array that will really sell the Nokia 9 Pureview. Nokia could have opted -- as it did for the Nokia 8, for example -- with a market matching price for the Nokia 9 Pureview of around $1,500 or so.

Instead, it will go on sale for US$699. That equates out to around $1,000 AUD, although we've got no specific information about local release dates or precise pricing. Still, that does suggest that Nokia might be bringing premium phones back under the critical $1,000 price point. That's a welcome step for everybody's wallets.

Nokia 9 Pureview specs

Compare SIM-only plans for the Nokia 9 Pureview

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