Since Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Nokia 9 Pureview has been in our thoughts. After talking with the team behind the engineering of the cameras of this phone, we waited a lot for it to be launched in India.
The anxiety was not less: Nokia brought together two giants in their respective areas, with Qualcomm for the processors and Light for the expertise in multiple cameras. The result of this cross, however, took time to reach our country.
Hand in hand with WOM, the Nokia 9 Pureview appeared at an almost ridiculous price for a high-end phone. And it is a high-end, it feels like a high-end, and takes pictures as a high-end. It is the first time that Nokia, after its return to the courts, makes us feel that way.
Nokia is far from breaking the mold: metal and glass, flat to the front and round back. It is Nokia’s DNA present in all its new lines and insight in this terminal. Something I like is the fact that it has only three buttons: two volume and power.
It is remarkable how the camera array has no protuberances and follows the line of the back of the equipment. Unfortunately, this plays against its thickness, since the thin metal side is a deception. It is not a deal breaker, but with the advances in miniaturization, I would have liked a thinner phone.
Trial and error
The screen is bright and sharp, something that is strange when you venture into certain manufacturers. The colors are quite vibrant and accompany the experience as much as possible, although I feel that saturates certain colors such as red and green. It is not a bad panel, but considering the quality of the cameras, I would have preferred an IPS of better quality instead of a P-OLED.
One of the complaints I have heard the most about the device is the fingerprint reader under the screen. Reasons there is plenty: it is quite inefficient, permanently indicates that you put your finger back, and is one of the low points of the Phone. However, I have to be the devil’s lawyer: all screen readers are slow, not very accurate and generally inefficient. The P30 Pro suffers from this same problem.
Light showed off
Regarding the cameras, we agree that it is a unique configuration. Five rear cameras of 12 MP, 28mm, f / 1.8; two of which are in color and three in black and white. The front is 20 MP and behind there is also a time of flight sensor.
The matrix of five cameras works at the same time: each time you take a picture, the five sensors are activated at different latitudes, and a Light chip collects the images in one, to reach dynamic ranges close to 13 stops.
This effectively achieves photos of amazing quality, dangerously similar to an SLR camera. The equipment has an unparalleled ability to detect depth, so blurring is virtually real. This detail is remarkable: zoom in on a photo to understand that having more information in a photo is always better.
Where it does fall, to my disgrace, is in the night photos. The algorithm that controls the brightness of the photo tends to burst sources of direct light so that the headlights and other street lights burn. This is not something you can not fix in Lightroom – after all, the Phone takes photos in RAW – but it is well worth having good photos immediately, even with artificial intelligence.
The front camera is pretty without issue, even with its 20 megapixels. There is only one camera in front, and Qualcomm’s image processing, as has been demonstrated, has its limits.
Performance
Another point that can potentially be a problem for many is the processing time of each photo. When you take photos on an iPhone XS, or on a Galaxy S10 +, your photos are available immediately. The Nokia 9 Pureview, even though it is optimized to the point of exhaustion, cannot with so much imaging information immediately.
This means in process times that they can reach ten seconds per photo, something unthinkable in 2019. If Nokia decides to make a device with the same camera configuration, we hope it solves that problem.
Its performance is what we expect from a high-end: the Snapdragon 845 along with its 6 GB of RAM make the difference between this terminal and a mid-range. Something that greatly favors your speed is Android One. The experience of having Android without layers or bloatware in the Nokia 9 Pureview is still appreciated. As for the battery life, we could be a full day taking pictures and using it normally. Clearly, it does not stand out for its energy capacity -3320 mAh.
Conclusion
In short, the Nokia 9 Pureview has everything you need to be up with the greats. Good cameras, spectacular performance, and manufacturing quality.
The problem that we identify is more of experience: this bet of Nokia was risky – a new type of camera – and it is in the small details where the rest is taking advantage. The phone has certain commitments that are not for someone accustomed to the simplicity of an iPhone or the flexibility of a Galaxy. Anyway, for INR 49,999 as the launch price in the Indian market, it is a must-see opportunity to have a phone of amazing photos skills for a competitive price.
