
If the presence of all those lenses on the back of the Nokia 9 Pureview didn't tip you off about how serious HMD Global is about the camera prowess of this phone, then the fact that it strongly suggests that you download and install Adobe Lightroom for Android probably will.
I'm used to plenty of phones suggesting download apps, but these are usually rubbish IAP-laden games or vendor-specific browsers or email apps that I'll never even touch. Having Lightroom installed as part of your set-up process speaks volumes about the target market for the Nokia 9 Pureview.
It's in those lenses that HMD Global has taken a risky route. I say risky because the multi-lens approach of every other vendor tends to mix wide and telephoto options alongside fixed focus lenses. You'd think with five lenses on board that you'd have a smorgasbord of differing zoom options to play with.
You'd think with five lenses on board that you'd have a smorgasbord of differing zoom options to play with.
Instead, you get 2 12MP RGB lenses alongside 3 monochrome lenses to play with. The special trick here is that by default, when you take a photo all five lenses fire at once. The phone throws all of those shots at once to a specially designed Light ASIC that handles smashing them together to come up with a shot that crams 240MP of detail into one 12MP photo.
Any decent photographer will tell you that taking a good photo takes patience and time, and that's absolutely true of the Nokia 9 Pureview. The shifting of that much data around the phone means that its post-processing time when you take a regular photo is measured in seconds. It's notably longer if you opt to shoot in RAW, and if you engage that sixth time-of-flight sensor to give the phone even more depth detail to process.
You can watch the processing happen in the notification window if you want to track it. As a rough guideline, shooting in both JPG and RAW with the depth sensor on, a single shot takes around 25 seconds to process.
shooting in both JPG and RAW with the depth sensor on, a single shot takes around 25 seconds to process.
You can keep taking photos while this is going on in the background, but sharing them around is a different matter. The one exception is if you shoot in burst mode, but then it only fires off a single 12MP lens, which rather defeats the purpose.
That slow processing speed also extends to what the Nokia 9 Pureview doesn't do well, and that's action shots. Firing all those lenses at a fast moving scene will often lead to a blurry shot, and one that you won't even know is blurry for a good half-minute or so.
Likewise, standard low light shooting is well below the standard you'd expect out of a flagship phone unless you deliberately kick it into Pro mode. Even then, it's easily outclassed by phones such as the Huawei P30 Pro or Google Pixel 3.
There's also some very definite lag when switching camera modes. These encompass Square, Panorama, Monochrome, Bokeh, Pro, Photo, Video, Slow Motion and Time-Lapsed options, but shifting between them often sees the Nokia 9 Pureview slow down to a crawl. Again, that's less than ideal if you're scrambling to capture a once-in-a-lifetime moment.
There are some solid highlights to the Nokia 9 Pureview's operation. If you're happy in the land of post-processing and you shoot a lot of monochrome shots, it's an utter joy to use, again as long as you have the patience.

It manages a good portrait shot for the most part too.
Here's Finder's own Jacob Smith in standard photo mode:

And in bokeh mode:

And finally in monochrome:

I've deliberately included non-edited photos in this review, because for the general consumer, they're not as likely to get into the minutiae of adjusting levels on a given photo. The reality, though, is that the Nokia 9 Pureview is at its best when you do shoot in RAW and post-process those shots.
It's very clear that the Nokia 9 Pureview is a camera phone for the camera enthusiast with both the patience for slow and deliberate shooting and post-processing photos afterwards. For everyday consumers, there are much easier and more flexible camera phones that would be a better fit.
Nokia 9 Pureview sample photos



