The Nokia 808 PureView was peerless in 2012. It was also highly memorable, unlike most smartphones released, month after month, over the last decade. Nokia may not be the same company it was back then, but the PureView camera obsession returns in the Nokia 9 unveiled at MWC 2019.
This latest Nokia phone has five cameras on its back, arranged like a runic shrine to the medium. None have a zoom lens. None have an ultra-wide lens. All have 12-megapixel sensors, with a standard field of view. Computational photography is their currency, not emulating a camera bag’s worth of lenses.
That's because the Nokia 9 PureView was developed in partnership with Light, makers of the Light L16. This was a “compact” camera with 16 sensors and lenses dotted across its back. We met up with the Light team back in 2015 when they showed us a non-working sample, a circuit board of a whole mess of camera sensors and lenses, in the back of a Soho pub. Light Senior VP of product design Bradley Lautenbach claimed it would offer the performance of a full-frame camera in a shell only an inch or so thick.
It would take almost two and a half years for the Light L16 to arrive. The pre-release buzz had already died out by the time it did. But even back in 2015, that this concept would eventually come to phones seemed obvious. The Nokia 9 PureView is the first to make this happen, although Sony has also announced a partnership with Light for future Sony smartphones.
The Light factor
The Nokia 9 PureView does not have any unique camera sensor hardware. All five of its cameras have the same Sony sensor, with 12-megapixel resolution and 1.25 micron sensor pixels.
It also uses the standard image processor of its Qualcomm CPU to process the images. Light provides a co-processor and software. They decide the exposure settings the cameras should use, and whether each needs to capture multiple images, for particularly tricky-to-shoot scenes.
Every higher-end phone combines multiple exposures for just about all of its shots, and the low-light and HDR techniques used by the Google Pixel 3 are some of the best examples of this in action. The Pixel 3 has a single rear camera “reinforced” with AI to let you shoot the equivalent of a long exposure without a tripod.
The Nokia 9 PureView instead poses the question: can more hardware plus software beat AI alone? Nokia says that, thanks to the use of three monochrome sensors as well as two colour ones, “dynamic range is unprecedented in a smartphone.” Monochrome sensors lack a colour filter, letting more light reach the sensor itself, for better sensitivity and dynamic range.
Nokia also claims the 5-camera array lets the Nokia 9 PureView capture images with 12.4 stops of dynamic range. That is in the same ballpark as a Canon EOD 5D Mark III. How does the Google Pixel 3 compare? We have no such figures for the phone, in part because its dynamic HDR algorithms likely wouldn’t respond to an image test chart as they would a sunset.
Read more: These are the best Android phones you can buy in 2021
Nokia 9 PureView vs the sun
We had a chance to briefly try the Nokia 9 PureView several floors up in a London hotel, as the sun was starting to set. It’s not a bad place to test a phone like this.
A few things stick out instantly. The Nokia 9 PureView is nowhere near as fast to take images as a Samsung Galaxy S10 or Pixel 3. There’s around a third of a second of shutter lag and, no surprise here, the post-processing of each image takes several seconds.
Trickier shots may involve distilling hundreds of megapixels’ worth of data into a 12-megapixel image. You're not barred from taking more photos as this happens, but to actually review your photo, you have to hang around in the Gallery as the processing icon whirs away.
The Pixel 3 nails shooting performance, and actually captures image information before you press the shutter button. Nokia’s 9 PureView does not, but if the results flatten all rivals, this may not matter. We were not instantly bowled over by the HDR effect, though.
In the image preview you could clearly see some overexposure in parts of the frame. All of this was rectified in the final image, and shadow detail was lifted significantly. However, the image also appeared to lack the contrast and colour vibrancy you might hope for in a camera effectively made for dynamic range, and it was too easy to shoot a slightly blurred image with the phone.
None of the Nokia 9 PureView’s cameras have optical stabilisation, but it also seems there’s little use of motion sensor data to improve handheld usability.
Similar criticisms were levelled at the Light L16 at its release in 2018. It seemed a little clunky, and was not great at merging the information of its three focal lengths. This highlights the benefits of the R&D power of a company like Google, over a small start-up like Light.
Light has no doubt made big software improvements since then, but the Nokia 9 PureView lacks an “AI” night mode, instead offering a 10-second long exposure mode that needs a tripod, unlike those of the Google Pixel 3 and Huawei Mate 20 Pro. However, we’re a way off drawing any conclusions about this camera. This technology deserves a much closer look. Direct comparisons with phones like the Galaxy S10+, Pixel 3 and Huawei Mate 20 Pro are the real test, but at this point we can’t assume visible hardware trumps invisible software.
True Depth
There are other benefits to the array. See that black circle, which plays “odd one out” along with the flash? It is part of a Time of Flight depth setup, which floods the scene with infra red light, and measures the delay of its reflection to calculate the distance of objects.
Phones have used similar techniques for years, in “laser” focus assists, but here the entire camera view is analysed rather than a single focal point. The recent Honor View 20 has such a Time of Flight depth camera.
Nokia says this is combined with the parallax difference depth of the ring of sensors to create a depth map with 1,200 layers. There aren’t handfuls of studio lighting and specific depth modes in the Nokia 9 PureView, but this should, in theory, result in some of the best simulated shallow depth of field images seen in a phone to date.
Tomorrow’s camera, yesterday’s phone
The Nokia 9 PureView has some of the most dynamic camera hardware used in a phone since the golden days of the PureView series. However, it has resulted in a phone that seems slightly out of sync with other 2019 handsets.
Why? “You can make a typical smartphone in six to nine months,” says HMD’s chief product officer Juho Sarvikas, “this has taken longer”.
The Nokia 9 PureView has a Snapdragon 845 processor, already supplanted by the Snapdragon 855. Sarvikas explains that while the phone could have been re-tooled with the newer processor, it would not be remotely ready for launch if this route were taken.
The phone has a “2K resolution”, notch-free 5.99-inch P-OLED screen, suggesting it has an LG panel. It has 6GB RAM, 128GB storage and an optical in-screen fingerprint scanner. It’s rated at IP67 water resistance, and has no headphone jack.
Build is the high-end norm, a sandwich of Gorilla Glass and aluminium. However, the crop circle of cameras on its back makes it more of a conversation starter than either an Apple iPhone XS Max or Samsung Galaxy S10+.
And while some of you may not consider buying a brand new phone with a year-old processor, at $699 it is significantly cheaper than top-tier rivals were at launch.
More normal Nokias
Nokia announced several other phones alongside the Nokia 9 PureView. The Nokia 3.2 is an entry-level phone with a 6.2-inch 720p display, a round notch and 13-megapixel rear camera. It costs $139 with 16GB storage and 2GB RAM, or $169 with 32GB storage and 3GB RAM. It may struggle against the extremely long-lasting Moto G7 Play, but the Nokia 3.2 feels and looks good for a plastic-shelled phone.
The Nokia 4.2 has an upgraded build, with glass on the front and back, and dual rear 13/5-megapixel cameras. Its screen is smaller at 5.71 inches, but the pink sand version has some of the accessible cuteness of the pastel pink Pixel 3. It costs $169 with 16GB and 2GB RAM or $199 for 32GB storage and 3GB RAM.
Nokia also announced a new feature phone, the Nokia 210. It is destined to go unnoticed by smartphone owners, but also to sell in huge numbers regardless. The Nokia 210 is a candybar shape phone with 2.5G mobile internet, a month-long battery life on standby and, of course, Snake. If you want to try out the digital detox fad you could do much worse at $35.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
