We got by for years with one main camera on our smartphones. Then dual cameras became a thing, and now, the industry is steadily moving toward three as the norm. Surely that must be enough, right?
Normally, I'd say yes, but HMD Global — the company behind Nokia's smartphones — have made a pretty compelling argument for five cameras with the new Nokia 9 PureView. All of those sensors work in tandem, and after testing the phone in New York, it's clear that there's an underlying method to this photographic madness. It honestly still feels a bit like overkill, but it's focused overkill, and if nothing else, the Nokia 9 offers a glimpse of how the future of smartphone photography might work.
Gallery: Nokia 9 PureView hands-on | 13 Photos
Gallery: Nokia 9 PureView hands-on | 13 Photos
For now, though, you should know this: unless you really, really care about cameras, this probably isn't the smartphone for you. HMD has essentially said as much. It's going to launch this year as a limited edition device meant for camera nerds, and while the company hasn't confirmed how many it plans to make, there probably won't be more than a few thousand of these things floating around. I get HMD's rationale — the Nokia 9 PureView still feels highly experimental — but the combination of these crazy/clever cameras and modern specs make it a tantalizing option for around €599.
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The phone packs a 5.99-inch P-OLED display running at 2K and (sigh) one of last year's Snapdragon 845 chipsets, along with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. There's an optical fingerprint sensor nestled behind that screen too, though I honestly didn't get to try it out. And beyond all that, the Nokia 9 is kind of a beauty (as long as you're not weirded out by all those camera holes around back.) The model I played with was a subtle, luminescent blue coated in Gorilla Glass, and supports Qi wireless charging and gigabit LTE where available. You Android purists have reason to be pleased, too: like just about every other Nokia smartphone out there, the Nokia 9 runs a very clean, Android One-certified build of Android 9.0.
The thing is, these specs are among the least interesting things about the PureView — let's talk about those cameras. All five are 12-megapixel sensors, but only two of them shoot in color. Curiously, the other three are monochrome sensors meant to give your photos heightened contrast and detail. Most other multi-camera smartphone setups involve a mix of wide, ultra-wide and telephoto sensors for added flexibility, but not this one. You can't use just one of the cameras, either — unless you're shooting in monochrome, they're all working, all the time.