The Nokia 9 PureView Boasts 5 Cameras, And More

Damien McFerran 17/01/2019 – 8:47am

2019's unexpected flagship champ?

While Samsung and its rivals get to work on their 2019 flagships, Nokia – or, to be more precise, licensee HMD Global, which currently uses the name for its phones – is also beavering away at what it hopes will be the year's most surprising handset.

The Nokia PureView 9 isn't official as yet, but leaks have given us a wealth of information. It is rumoured we'll see the phone in the middle of February, which would allow it to get a head-start on all of the phones announced at this year's Mobile World Congress, which takes place at the end of next month.

It is also rumoured that the PureView 9 will have an in-screen fingerprint scanner, and the fansite Love Nokia claims to have discovered several animations which will play on the screen when this scanner is used (you can see them below).

Another rumour suggests that the PureView 9 will have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 CPU as standard, but Nokia is also working on a more powerful variant that will feature the Snapdragon 855, Qualcomm's 2019 flagship mobile chipset. The 855 is also 5G compatible, so expect to see that version of the phone much later in the year, if this leak is true.

The PureView 9 is expected to have a 5.9-inch QHD display and a roomy 4,150mAh battery. Android 9 is also said to be on-board, and there's 128GB of storage as standard. 8GB of RAM is also mooted, which should be more than enough for most users.

Thanks to that 5-camera setup on the rear, the PureView 9's biggest selling point is likely to be photography, however. More sensors means more light is being taken in, and that means low-light imagery should be brilliant; Google has made a big deal about the 'Night' shooting mode on its Pixel 3, so it's a smart play by HMD to go after the same market. Also, because of the 5 cameras, we should also see some interesting visual tricks involving perspective and 3D space.

There's no solid word on price but HMD's phones have always skewed towards the lower end of the market, so we could be looking at anything from £600 to £800. All in all, the PureView 9 is a bold move by the company and, if all those cameras on the back work as planned, it could be quite a groundbreaking release. However, if it doesn't make as big a splash as planned then it will quickly get forgotten amid the hype for the Galaxy S10 and Samsung's proposed folding phone.