Three cameras on the back isn’t enough. We need more. More more. So much more that Nokia has embraced the crazy with a staggering five cameras on the back.
Once there was a time that smartphone makers happily embraced the crazy, the strange, and the truly individual ideas that separated their concepts from everyone else.
Granted, that was mostly before the age of the smartphone, when Motorola and Nokia were dabbling in unusual form-factors and designs that truly stood out, and those days are long gone now that everyone has the tried and tested big-screened smartphone.
But it also may be changing.
While foldable phones could pave the way for more exciting designs that combine the tablet and the big phone into one and the same, Nokia is dabbling once again. Rather than stick with yet another big screen phone with two or three cameras just like everyone else, it’s trying something different, announcing a five-camera phone, the Nokia 9 PureView.
That is to say, it’s a phone with five cameras on the back, making it something a little different, and offering yet one more up front. This makes the Nokia 9 PureView a total six camera phone, which isn’t a new record entirely, even though the five on the back is, indeed, a first.
It’s also a first for the recently relaunched Nokia brand under owner HMD to use the “PureView” brand, a label Nokia in its smartphone days used when it was playing with advanced camera technology. The concept between the new PureView and the old isn’t exactly the same, but what’s being offered in the Nokia 9 PureView is very interesting all the same.
While five cameras might suggest a logic similar to Light’s L16 with various focal lengths to form a sharp and detailed image with a massive 50-odd megapixels, Nokia’s approach is a little more phone and social friendly: forget the big megapixel count, the Nokia 9 PureView is a 12 megapixel camera made up of five 12 megapixel cameras.
The idea here instead is to rely on two 12 megapixel colour cameras and three 12 megapixel monochrome cameras, all working together for a high quality 12 megapixel image.
Under the hood, the specs are fairly high-end, with an eight-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chip plugged into 6GB RAM and 128GB storage, complete with 802.11a/b/g/n/AC WiFi, Bluetooth 5, Near-Field Communication, GPS, and Category 16 4G LTE offering gigabit speeds.
All of that will sit in a body measuring 8mm with a 5.99 inch pOLED screen delivering a Quad HD+ resolution, making it fairly high-end in three grand scheme of things, even if the spec list makes the Nokia 9 PureView a little more like last year’s phone than something from this year.
Really, though, we’re not concerned by the slightly outdated specs, and they’re still good. We’re focused on the massive camera array on the back, which is something a little bit different for an industry focused on zoom in the camera world.
Armed with five 12 megapixel cameras, each shot will take in a minimum of 60 megapixels of data and convert it to 12, with “minimum” being the operative word here. With each camera technically working in HDR, each of the five cameras on the Nokia 9 PureView could be capturing several more, increasing the potential megapixel amount considerably, improving quality overall.
The catch here is that the focal length would all be the same standard wide angle lens, though it could be a very high quality image all the same.
“Nokia smartphones have always pioneered imaging innovation. True to that legacy, we are taking a significant leap forward in introducing the most advanced computational imaging system on a smartphone, the Nokia 9 PureView,” said Juho Sarvikas, Chief Product Officer for HMD Global.
“Designed for photography enthusiasts, the Nokia 9 PureView is the only smartphone to capture images simultaneously from all five lenses to give you an image capture so rich that post processing possibilities are endless,” he said. “On top, we bring power editing suites like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Google Photos depth editor right to your fingertip – now explore every detail with your Nokia 9 PureView.”
Nokia’s unusual five-camera 9 PureView won’t be alone in phone releases for Nokia this year, with a range built more for wallet-friendly budgets, too.
You can expect big screens all around, with the Nokia 4.2 delivering a 5.71 inch screen with two cameras, Nokia 3.2 getting in a 6.26 inch screen with one camera on the back, and a proper entry-level model in the Nokia 1 Plus getting a 5.45 inch screen and Android Go.
“We’ve had a phenomenal response from consumers to our entire portfolio, thanks to our unique approach to Android, delivering a pure, secure and always up-to-date experience,” said Florian Seiche, CEO of HMD Global.
“We have delivered on this commitment, changing the smartphone ownership paradigm by offering an experience that only gets better over time. Today, with these new phones, we are taking a leap forward by delivering the very latest innovations from Google across our entire portfolio.”
While Nokia hasn’t yet talked up release dates for the range, it has said the Nokia 9 PureView will be coming to Australia, arriving with Android One’s three years of updates at JB HiFi and Harvey Norman when it does arrive.
As for the others, we’ll let you know when Nokia outs dates and availability for those models, as well. If we had to guess, expect April to May for the Nokia 9 PureView, and April to June for the others.
