A Nokia 9 review

Design

The design and appearance of this phone are gorgeous, no matter how you look at it. The edges are made out of 6000-series aluminium. The seam where the glass meets the metal edge has no plastic buffer to it, but instead the glass kind of disappears to the chamfered edges. The back of the phone looks super sleek. The obvious things you see here: the camera setup, Zeiss, Nokia and Android One logos. The FCC, thrash can logos, model number etc. are neatly hidden unless viewed under a bright light and in a funny angle where the light barely reflects off of the surface.

The front of the phone looks pretty pleasing too. The front has two chins at the top and the bottom, which is fine and nothing too distracting (the phone feels super tall though). I personally favor the notchless design, as it gives more room for the notification area to show properly. I've always liked the inclusion of the Nokia logo at the front (but maybe that's just me :-D).

All in all the phone feels pretty light and very pleasant in the hand thanks to the curved back glass. The glass back is super slippery against just about anything, but strangely it isn't too bad to hold with one hand and I think that has to do with how narrow the phone is; the phone fits to smaller hands also thanks to the slim&narrow profile but the height is the only thing making this a big phone. The curvature of the back also makes this phone feel really good in hand.

Fingerprint sensor

Although the design is excellent in terms of looks, there are a few tradeoffs still. I got used to the super fast and accurate fingerprint scanner of the Nokia 8.1 that it felt a bit jarring to get used to the fingerprint sensor under the display. I thought that the best place for the fingerprint sensor was at the front like the Nokia 8 had, but after using the Nokia 8.1 I started to think otherwise. When I took the phone out of the pocket, my finger was already resting right on the fingerprint sensor and the phone was already open when it was in front of me. The back fingerprint sensor of the 8.1 has other utility to it too; it is possible to get the notification center and quick settings by swiping down the sensor, which is a neat feature to have with these super tall phones.

Fingerprint sensor on the back of the Nokia 9 would have made the design a little less elegant, but it would have upped the functionality by a lot. I don't have too much experience with other in display fingerprint sensors, but the one on the Nokia 9 is pretty average at best. I can get the sensor to work pretty reliably, but it is still so much slower than the sensor on the 8.1 for example.

For those who struggle with the fingerprint recognition I have two tips for you. The first is from twitter https://twitter.com/SomeGadgetGuy/status/1107012785513222144. Juan actually scanned his finger twice to improve the recognition with a screen protector, I myself didn't need to do this step, as I don't like to cover my phones with anything :-). The second tip, which I had succes with is to scan the thumb from the thickest point of you finger right on top of the joint. This way you will maximize the surface area over the sensor. The sensor isn't unusable by any means, but when you have to do these tricks or kikkakakkosia as we say in Finland, it clearly goes to show it isn't that good either.

Questions about the camera and applications

I asked @madbilly what questions he and the forums have about the Nokia 9 and I think I can answer some of them now. If you have a question about anything, feel free to ask and I will answer to the best of my knowledge. I also took a lot of the compared pictures with the Nokia 8.1 and it performed really well, but I feel like the Lumia 1020 comparison gives a better ballbark of where the Nokia 9 sits with it's camera(s).

Q: Can you find the special lens profile in Lightroom which we were told exists for the 9 PureView?

A: I found the different lens options, but I didn't find Nokia there yet. I have the feb 13 lightroom version.

Q: Can you work out how to do refocus or other things with the depth mapping in Lightroom?

A: I didn't find refocus or depth mapping from Lightroom at this time (if someone else does, please let me know).

Q: Work out how to get great photos in low light (as good as a Lumia 1020!?)

A: As a matter of fact I have a great example of how the auto mode sometimes fails remarkably in dark scenarios, but the pro mode on the other hand can get pretty amazing results even compared to the L1020.

Nokia 9 full auto

This is full auto .jpg from the Nokia 9. I was able to get some details from the raw file but the picture still didn't look quite right. The auto mode, I think, is afraid of longer exposures. This was with 1/30 sec exposure and the ISO was pumped up all the way to 6400. This seems a little weird to me. Sure there is no OIS, but to use such a fast exposure time and pump up the ISO feels a bit weird.

Lumia 1020 manual

Lumia 1020 is pretty good in low light. I had a hard time getting a good focus and I think some details are a bit blurred because my hand wobbled. This was shot with 0,6 sec exposure and 3200 ISO. No matter how many photos I took, there was always something funny going on with the street lights at top right of the photo. I had much better colours with 0,8 sec exposure and 1600 ISO, but the photo was too blurred because of my hand movement. The L1020 can produce much better low light shots in auto than the Nokia 9 and the results were much like the photo taken here.

Nokia 9 manual settings

 

This is where the pretty exiting things start to happen. This was shot with 0,25 sec exposure and 2000 ISO. Compared to the Lumia, this has much better colours and is more accurate to the scene I saw. It seems to me, that the auto mode is scared of shaky hands and tries to shoot with 1/33 exposure and 6400 ISO. I was able to consistently get relatively blur free photos with 1/4 exposure time.

Q: Test the ability to take photos of a moving subject - action shots - and work out how to get the best ones (as good as on a Lumia 1020)

A: The Nokia 9 is somewhat capable of good action shots, given there is enough light to use faster exposure times. Here's a tweet that I think is a pretty good example of an action shot: https://twitter.com/HisWayUp/status/1108321807348744192.

Q: How good is the EIS?

A: Here's an example. Do note that even though the videos originally are 1080p and 4K, you might not get the option to view them at those resolutions. This is a demo about the EIS on the Nokia 9. The EIS seems to work wonderfully with 1080p video and in fact the resolution was set to that by default. 4K seems a bit wobbly and has bad EIS or no stabilization at all. I also included a video from a rock consert. If you're interested, the band is called Wishing Well and it was the warm up band before the Graham Bonnet live show. They're on Spotify too, so check out their song Children of Paradise. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZUcx7JqbH1f79nLfQovjTC2gG3rxAEQU

Q: Can you get an old OMTP headset (like came with pre-Lumias) to work with it?

A: I sadly don't have any OMTP headsets.

Q: Is there really no manual focus option in pro mode?

A: There is no manual focus, depth on or off. No pro mode/Lumia style settings panel for video either.

Q: How does refocus work?

A: If you take a photo of a close subject with distant background the camera then creates some natural bokeh, so you actually can't freely refocus to the distant background. However if the subjects are fairly close to oneanother, then the refocus works like you would expect. When you want photos that have blurred backgrounds, you need to compose your photos a bit, so that the camera understands what you are wanting to achieve. This works better than on other devices though, but I would advise you to stay away from going for too much background blur as that might create some weird artifacts on different surfaces.

Camera samples (daylight, full auto, no depth added&just natural bokeh)

Nokia 9

This is a good example, of how the Nokia 9 achieves very good dynamic range. Look at the thermometer, you can clearly see the 4 and the 0. The original picture is very zoomable to the details of the lizard.

Lumia 1020 

Here's what the Lumia could do in auto. You can clearly see how to thermometer is blown out. Otherwise the detail is there.

Lumia 1020 RAW .dng file

Here's what I could could salvage from the digital negative .dng file of the Lumia. I didn't really touch the colours too much, but I adjusted the highlights, exposure and shadows. I first did this with a desktop app, but then decided to give the Lightroom CC mobile app a go and I think the results are pretty good considering how blown out the first .jpg output was.

This goes to show that if you shoot in RAW, you can work wonders for you images and almost everything can be salvaged. Once you can refocus the image in the Lightroom app, you can really do some miracles with the Nokia 9, as it's images are never really blown out and there is huge amounts of data to work with. ttps://twitter.com/sarvikas/status/1109275909490532353

In addition to HDR like photos, the Nokia 9 produces some of the more accurate photos in terms of colours. Lumia 1020 I think was always pretty good in terms of not saturating photos too much, but the Nokia 9 is more faithful to the original scene you see when taking a photo.

Nokia 9

I think the Nokia 9 nails the colours here. The green in the background in nice and dark and the wood in the foreground is just the right colour. The butterfly has great detail too, especially the hairs in the feet are visible when zoomed in.

Lumia 1020

The colours on the Lumia aren't too blown out, but compared to the Nokia 9, the colours are a bit wonky to be honest. When zoomed in on the RAW .dng file, the Lumia is a whole different beast, preserving more detail in the feet and other hair. Also, I love how the Lumia 1020 allows for a nice shallow the depth of field the  due to the image sensors size.

Nokia 9

 

Here again the Nokia 9 shows its HDR style photos. The greens at the back and the exit sign are truer to life than the Lumia produces and the ceiling is not blown out. The picture seems a bit dimm though and maybe the .dng file could have been given some boost in the lightroom app, but for the sake of comparison, I'm leaving this as it is.

Lumia 1020

Here the greens at the back are a bit more saturated and the ceiling is a bit blown out. This also could be fixed in lightroom. Somehow, eventhough the Nokia 9 produces more realistic colours and doesn't blow out the ceiling, I quite like the colours on the flowers in this one.

Nokia 9

This was taken from my moms place. This is pretty accurate as far as I can recall in terms of colours. Exposure 1/30, ISO 2990.

Lumia 1020

This doesn't look too bad either, but the colours are a bit wonky again. Exposure 1/13, ISO 800.

Nokia 9

The same picture as the first one, but just a bit depth added.

Random Nokia 9 camera samples

Igor :) Monochrome mode is actually pretty nice and sometimes I really feel like it can capture the liveliness and the atmosphere really nicely (also, it can hide the bad looking colours like our floor and the floor mat). A noteworthy feature of the monochrome mode is that, the viewfinder shows what the middle RGB camera sees, but the actual photo is taken with the camera that resides under the flash. So close up photos will be offcenter!

Here's an action shot of Igor. A little depth added in google photos. I feel if you add too much of the software blur, it causes some weird artifacts, like for example the leash suddenly looks blurry from the middle. I usually add just a little blur so the viewer of the photo knows where I want them to look.

Joe Stumps guitar from the Graham Bonnet live band show. This is taken with auto on pretty low light. Exposure 1/30, ISO 6400, auto. Again, the Nokia 9 pumps up the ISO and uses a fast shutter speed.

The same photo with a little depth added. Look at the platform left to the guitar. This is where the Nokia 9 sometimes stumbles a bit. It blurs out a bit strangely there, but to be honest this picture doesn't even need the added depth. Portraits of humans tend to come out more precisely, but I think that the Nokia 9 does a pretty good job with non living things also.

Another low light shot, this time with more snow. 1/8 sec exposure, 2000 ISO, manual.

Exposure 1/80, ISO 126, auto. Colours are spot on and the background isn't blown out.

Nokia 9 sometimes has the tendency to oversharpen the pictures, but that sometimes comes to personal preference. Exposure 1/50, ISO 289, auto.

Other noteworthy stuff

As a smartphone, the Nokia 9 is truly excellent all-round. Awesome display, fast charging + wireless charging. I'm still waiting for the launch of the Nokia Wireless Charger DT-10W, or should I go with the Samsung charger?

Typing with the Nokia 9 is a suprisingly fun thing to do. The vibrator motor, I feel is, better than average and you should definitely at least try typing with vibration on. The haptics feel almost as good as they did with the N9 back in the day. I was so good at typing with that phone that I sometimes didn't even look where my finger was going, I almost have the same feeling with the Nokia 9. If you use Swiftkey, set the vibrate length to minimum so it gives you the haptics, but stays unobtrusive.

The camera in this phone can deliver some amazing results, but the auto mode I feel needs some tuning. Especially the low light is a place to improve with software. Photos from the Nokia 9 are always HDR like and you rarely see any blown out highlights. Shooting in RAW and using the mobile Lightroom app can give you some amazing results, but just by learning how to use the pro mode goes a long way.

I usually shoot with the depth mapping on, as that gives some flexibility to enhance the focus afterwards, although the focus is almost always flawless even while zoomed in afterwards. I would advise to be really careful with the blur effect, especially if you shoot non living things as they are sometimes difficult to even the Nokia 9 to understand. And if you take photos of people, don't go all the way with the blur, it looks a bit too unnatural.

The photo takes some time to process, but you can shoot while the stitching and processing is happening. A normal rgb photo takes roughly 5-7 sec, depth 10-14 sec and RAW files sometimes take almost 30 sec. With action shots I recommend that you test out the settings beforehand, where the shutter speed is as fast as possible relative to the amount of light available. In daylight you could have something like 1/2000 sec exposure and 1000 ISO, or in dimmer conditions 1/1000 and 3200 ISO, you get the idea.

Things to improve with the Nokia 9 and possible V2

So, the Nokia 9 isn't perfect, albeit to my mind it pretty much is the dream phone right now :). There's no way around it, the Nokia 9 processes the photos super long and you don't really have a good preview of the photo until it's processed. I think this could be somehow be tweaked with some sleight of hand tricks; the preview could just show what the middle camera saw during taking the photo to give a rough idea if the focus is good for example. The sharing of the photo could be queued up so that the phone starts sending the photo after the image has been processed, but all the while the user doesn't have to wait for the processing. Usually the images turn out just right after the first try, but sometimes low light shots and action shots don't come out like the way you want them.

I noticed when I was shooting RAW files, the phone became a bit warm to the touch and the battery started draining fast. This was to be expected, but then at 40% battery or so, the camera started crashing after 2-3 tree photos. Sarvikas said in twitter that this will be fixed and I have faith in that. https://twitter.com/sarvikas/status/1109275909490532353

For storage, I think the 128 GB feels the same like it was with the Lumia 1020 that had 32 GB. This should have been 256 GB straight I think, SD card slot would have been nice too, but I honestly don't even know how nice Android plays with expandable storage; would the saving of the image be too slow with the SD card? The indirect effect of lower storage space is that I have to be more active backupping the photos to my PC and hard drives, which is nice I think :D. The google photos argument doesn't cut it here, because I want to use the full resolution images.

Battery life has been good, but after the Nokia 8.1 I can't help but feel a little sad. That phone could have 8 hrs or longer screen on times and almost always 2 days of battery life. The Nokia 9 lasts 3-5 hrs screen on, depending how much you use the camera. Nevertheless I've had no struggles getting through a day. Just waiting for the Nokia Wireless Charger DT-10W now.

No headphone jack :(

Is this a buy?

For me this was an obvious buy. Excellent phone with a camera that shows promising results. If you like to just snap pictures and immediately share them, you would maybe be better of with something else. For me this was never an issue with the Lumia 1020 either, to wait for excellent images to come out. In every other respects this phone feels super fast and there aren't any huge quirks with it. Also after many years, I'm using a phone with OLED screen and the glance feature is SO good. Price in Finland was 599€ and I feel no other phone can compete with the Nokia 9 in that price range in any regards whatsoever.

In daylight this camera performs really well in auto, but low light shots and action shots require you to get familiar with the pro mode. If you're not into that, then this camera mightn't be for you.

Juho Lemmetyinen
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