Published 22:01 IST, February 24th 2019
Nokia 9 PureView with five Zeiss rear cameras launched at MWC 2019 at a price of around Rs 50,000
The Nokia 9 PureView is finally official, and unsurprisingly, it comes with five rear cameras
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The Nokia 9 PureView is finally official, and unsurprisingly, it comes with five rear cameras – that’s the most for any smartphone ever. All the five rear cameras of the Nokia 9 have been fine-tuned by Carl Zeiss and HMD (the company behind the Nokia brand) has worked extensively with Light on a dedicated image co-processor that apparently helps make sense of the phone’s five cameras.
Those seeking versatility from their smartphone cameras should look elsewhere though. As unlike prominent phones with multiple cameras – like the LG V40 or the newly announced Samsung Galaxy S10, the Nokia 9’s array of five cameras have the same resolution and the same aperture and the same focal length – a 12MP sensor with f/1.8 aperture to be precise. There is a difference though. While two of the sensors onboard the Nokia 9 are RGB or colour, the other three are monochrome or black and white.
The emphasis, in the case of the Nokia 9, lies on detail and dynamic range which is why every time you fire up the shutter button, all five cameras of the phone shoot different exposures simultaneously – entailing in a single image with seemingly more detail and dynamic range as opposed to a conventional phone with a conventional image sensor. HMD is going so far as to say that the individual cameras on the Nokia 9 can themselves shoot multiple exposures, resulting in even more detail.
Five cameras aside, the Nokia 9 is also a flagship phone (but not essentially a true-blue flagship with the latest and greatest of hardware). It has a 5.9-inch 2K POLED PureView display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on the front and back, an in-display fingerprint scanner (and face unlock), a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage, stock Android 9 Pie (Android One) software, 20MP front camera, IP67-certification and a 3,320mAh battery with support for wireless charging.
The Nokia 9 PureView will be available in midnight blue colour option for $699 (roughly Rs 50,000) starting from March.
The Nokia 9 has been a long time coming but apparently its one-of-a-kind penta camera setup has been seemingly hard to make: hence the delay. The same was true about last year’s Nokia 8 Sirocco as well, which was one of the reasons why it shipped with a year-old Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor at a time when rivals were pumping out Qualcomm Snapdragon 845-based flagships. The Nokia 9 similarly comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor at a time when rivals have started pumping out Qualcomm Snapdragon 855-based flagships.
As such the penta camera setup on the Nokia 9 PureView will have to be nothing short of ground-breaking to justify its older hardware and high price tag. Watch this space for our full analysis of the Nokia 9 in the days to come.
21:55 IST, February 24th 2019