Meet the Nokia 9: Five cameras bring a different approach to phone photography

The Nokia 9 Pureview. [credit:
Ron Amadeo ]




HMD's Nokia brand is building another flagship smartphone, and unlike the Nokia 8 Sirocco, this one is actually coming to the US. HMD is announcing the 'Nokia 9 Pureview' at Mobile World Congress, and it's got a whopping five cameras on the back.
HMD devices usually live in a price range with very little competition. In the sub-$400 market the company really only has Motorola to contend with, and it can easily win most of those matchups by virtue of regularly shipping security updates and new OS releases. This is a $700 smartphone, though, and in the cutthroat world of flagship devices, HMD has a lot more competition than it is used to. Does the Nokia 9 stack up well against the $550 OnePlus 6T? Can it really hang in the price range of the $750 Galaxy S10e? We aren't so sure.
The first concern is the spec sheet. While just about every phone announced at Mobile World Congress this year will be running the new Snapdragon 855, the Nokia 9 is running the Snapdragon 845, a chip that is now fully one year old. By using the old Snapdragon, HMD is missing out on a chip that Qualcomm claims has a 45-percent faster CPU and a 20-percent faster GPU, and should be more battery efficient thanks to the change from a 10nm manufacturing process to a 7nm one. In the 'save some money' category, the OnePlus 6T will give you the same SoC for $150 less, in the 'spend a bit more' category, the Galaxy S10e has the newer Snapdragon 855 for an extra $50.
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