The Nokia 9 PureView is a

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

-branded flagship penta-camera

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

developed by

HMD Global HMD Global (Human Mobile Devices) is a Finnish independent mobile phone manufacturer. The company is made up of the mobile phone business that the Nokia, Nokia Corporation sold to Microsoft in 2014, then bought back in 2016 by former executives ...

. It was introduced at the 2019

Mobile World Congress MWC Barcelona (formerly but still commonly referred to as Mobile World Congress) is an annual trade show dedicated to the mobile communications industry. The event is held in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain, at the Fira de Barcelona Gran ...

(MWC) in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

, Spain as a successor to the Nokia 8 Sirocco. It alludes to Nokia's previous camera-centric PureView devices, which ended with the Lumia 950 and 950 XL. Like most of HMD's Nokia smartphones of the time, the 9 PureView is part of the

Android One Android One was a family of third-party Android smartphones promoted by Google. In comparison to many third-party Android devices, which ship with a manufacturer's customized user interface and bundled apps, these devices run near-stock ver ...

program.

Specifications

Hardware and Design

Key upgrades over the Nokia 8 Sirocco include a faster

Snapdragon 845 The Qualcomm Snapdragon suite of systems on chips (SoCs) are designed for use in smartphones, tablets, laptops, 2-in-1 PCs, smartwatches, and smartbooks devices. Before Snapdragon SoC made by Qualcomm before it was renamed to Snapdrago ...

chip and Adreno 630 GPU, a taller 6" 18:9 screen with

HDR10 HDR10 Media Profile, more commonly known as 'HDR10'', is an open high-dynamic-range video (HDR) standard announced on 27 August 2015, by the Consumer Electronics Association. It is the most widespread HDR format. HDR10 is not Backward compatibil ...

support, a higher resolution HDR selfie camera that can now record in 4K, more LTE bands, faster wireless charging, an in-display fingerprint scanner, and a slightly larger battery capacity. Storage and RAM are unchanged, with a single 128 GB/6 GB configuration. At the rear, a multi-camera setup is featured in a honeycomb-like arrangement with a dual-LED flash and time-of-flight sensor (ToF) offset to the left and right respectively, and a hole for the microphone above. Externally, the 9 keeps the glass/metal construction of the Sirocco, but it shelves the Sirocco's stainless steel chassis in favor of 6000 series aluminum.

Cameras

The 9 PureView uses a penta-camera system with ZEISS optics, 2 of which are

RGB The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green, and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three ...

sensors and 3 of which are monochromatic sensors. All 5 lenses are identical 12 MP f/1.8 units (Sony Exmor RS IMX 386). HDR is supported, but the device lacks phase-detection, autofocus and

optical image stabilization Image stabilization (IS) is a family of techniques that reduce blurring associated with the motion of a camera or other imaging device during exposure. Generally, it compensates for pan and tilt (angular movement, equivalent to yaw and pi ...

(OIS). When a picture is taken, each camera takes a separate image, then the images are combined and processed by a

digital signal processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor chip, with its architecture optimized for the operational needs of digital signal processing. DSPs are fabricated on metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit chips. ...

. Pictures can be taken in both

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

and RAW formats and can be edited afterwards through

Adobe Lightroom Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, often shortened to Lightroom, is an Image organizer, image organization and image editing, editing application developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe and licensed as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, Creative Cloud suite. It i ...

, which can be installed during setup. Additionally, the 9 has a Pro mode which simulates

DSLR A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that combines the optics and mechanisms of a single-lens reflex camera with a solid-state image sensor and digitally records the images from the sensor. The reflex des ...

settings. A feature called Depth Map captures more than 1200 layers of depth data. Depth Map is enabled by the time-of-flight sensor (ToF) and only works with JPEG and RGB photos. At the front, a 20 MP sensor is present with HDR. The 9 Pureview is the only Android phone to have a penta-camera system.

Software

The Nokia 9 ships with Android One's version of Android 9 Pie pre-installed. In December 2019, HMD began to release

Android 10 Android 10 (code name, codenamed Android Q during development) is the Android version history, tenth major release and the 17th version of the Android (operating system), Android mobile operating system. It was first released as a developer pre ...

for the 9 PureView. In late 2021, Nokia announced cancelling all plans of ever upgrading it to

Android 11 Android 11 is the eleventh major release and 18th version of Android, the mobile operating system developed by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google. It was released on September 8, 2020. The first phone launched in Europe with Android 11 ...

and beyond, and offered a discount for another Nokia smartphone instead to customers.

Reception

PCMag ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and continues . Overview ''PC Magaz ...

'' concluded that the 9 "could be the right smartphone for shutterbugs, but there are better options for everyone else". Praise was directed towards the design, display and software; '' Tom's Guide'' and ''

Digital Trends Digital Trends is a Portland, Oregon-based tech news, lifestyle, and information website that publishes news, reviews, guides, how-to articles, descriptive videos and podcasts about technology and consumer electronics products. With offices in P ...

'' felt that the RAW-Lightroom integration provided users with significantly more control over photographs. The in-display fingerprint scanner and battery life were both criticized in addition to the loudspeaker's sound quality. Reviewers also noted that the image processing was slow and were disappointed that a camera-oriented phone lacked an

SD card Secure Digital (SD) is a proprietary, non-volatile, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA). Owing to their compact size, SD cards have been widely adopted in a variety of portable consumer electronics, including dig ...

slot, especially considering the size of RAW image files. The usage of an older Snapdragon 845 chip also drew some criticism initially, as its competitors were using the newer Snapdragon 855 chip. The 9 PureView received an overall score of 85 from '' DxOMark'' (matching that of

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

iPhone 7 The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are smartphones that were developed and marketed by Apple Inc. They are the List of iPhone models, tenth generation of the iPhone. They were announced on September 7, 2016, at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium i ...

and LG's V30), with a photo score of 88 and a video score of 80. ''DxOMark'' remarked that " th the possible exception of its Bokeh capability, the Nokia 9 PureView doesn't deliver either a photo or video performance on a par with other current model phones in its premium price range." In February 2020, the 9 PureView won a Good Design Award 2019.

References

{{Nokia devices, 1000 series=yes, 2000 series=yes, 3000 series=yes, 5000 series=yes, 6000 series=yes, 7000 series=yes, 8000 series=yes, 9000 series=yes, 3-digit series=yes, asha=yes, cseries=yes, eseries=yes, nseries=yes, xseries=yes, 3-digit symbian=yes, lumia=yes, internet=yes, n-gage=yes, x family=yes, android=yes, originals=yes, c series=yes, g series=yes, x series=yes, miscellaneous=yes, below=yes 9 PureView Mobile phones introduced in 2019 Mobile phones with multiple rear cameras Mobile phones with 4K video recording Discontinued flagship smartphones PureView