Speculation about Nokia’s next flagship phone swirled this fall after leaks revealed a wild-looking rear-camera setup complete with five separate lenses. Nokia doesn’t seem quite ready to release any official details about the rumoured Nokia 9 PureView, but a new, high-res video shows why it might be the first noteworthy smartphone of 2019.
Discovered by MySmartPrice and also posted by @evleaks, this new leak appears to be a promotional clip created by Nokia. It features detailed renders that once again show a hexagonal, rear-camera layout with five lenses, a flash, and a yet-unknown sixth sensor that could allow the phone to shoot pics using all five cams at once. This could let users adjust the focus of a particular photo long after it’s been taken.
But what’s more interesting are all the other little things about the Nokia 9 that this video shows. Borrowing a bit from the Nokia 8 Sirocco’s design, the Nokia 9 will apparently sport a glass-sandwich design with subtly curvy sides similar to a Samsung Galaxy S8 or S9. However, unlike the Nokia 7.1, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of notch, or even a real attempt to implement a full, bezel-less design like a lot of other modern handsets, which is actually kind of refreshing.
Instead, the Nokia 9 looks to have small, but balanced borders on top and bottom, dual selfie cams, and an indicator light of some sort. Unfortunately, even though there seems to be a fair amount of room on its chin, the Nokia 9 apparently isn’t using that space to tack on a second front-facing speaker.
On top of that, the Nokia 9 may also join other Nokia phones as part of Google’s Android One program, which means the phone would sport stock Android out of the box and would have software updates managed directly by Google—good news for anyone looking to get away from the lethargic update cycle employed by Samsung, LG, and others.
Nokia 9 PureView “Beholder.” HNY pic.twitter.com/x4Kh3anP46
— Evan Blass (@evleaks) December 31, 2018
Additional alleged specs for the Nokia 9 PureView include a 15cm 2K HDR10 display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and Zeiss optics, which will apparently work together with all those sensors to let the Nokia 9 gather “10x more light” compared to a regular smartphone camera sensor. And in a somewhat small but welcome upgrade, it seems the Nokia 9 will even feature an in-display fingerprint sensor instead of the company’s traditional rear-mounted reader.
But the biggest surprise here is that, instead of waiting to launch the Nokia 9 at MWC 2019 in late February, MySmartPrice claims Nokia is trying to get out in front of the other phone makers with a debut sometime before the end of January, though there’s no word on when the Nokia 9 might actually go on sale.
If Nokia can pull it off—between its five rear cameras (two more than what you get on the LG V40 and Huawei Mate 20 Pro), stock Android, and solid specs—the Nokia 9 could ultimately offer a nice blend between far-out camera tech and a less thirsty, trend-bucking design.