Gadgetory

(mustache rustles) - Makes like a weird noise, you notice this? It's okay, I'll shave it soon, don't worry about it. Hey guys, this is Austin. Ever since Nokia was revived with a focus on Android, they've actually released some really cool stuff. Phones like the Nokia 7.1 deliver solid hardware with a clean software experience, and most importantly, it's all at a pretty reasonable price. So, when Nokia released this, the Nokia 9 PureView, at a little bit more of a flagship level, well, I gotta say I was curious. Also, it has a bunch of cameras. So around back there are five 12 megapixel sensors, so two of them shoot in color, three of them shoot in monochrome, and there's also a time-of-flight sensor as well as a flash. It's actually kinda got a cool honeycomb look, although I think a lot of people find this to be kind of a little disturbing maybe. How does this make you feel? - Oh no (laughs) I do not, no, stop that. - The idea is that all these cameras are fused together using some tech from Light, the company who makes that crazy 16 sensor camera, now while this doesn't go quite to that ridiculous degree, what you should get, at least on paper, are things like better sharpness, better low-light and a better depth map for things like portrait shooting, but of course, the real question is how well does it actually work, or did they just add a bunch of cameras here to be cool and trendy? Now we can look at the on paper specs all day, but the real test is to take the Nokia 9 PureView into the real world, and you can't ask for a nicer day to shoot than this. So to start with, we're going to take some standard photos to see how the cameras work in a normal, pretty nice looking condition. Wow, it takes a long time to process even like a standard still. Let's try something a little tighter, okay, so the camera app is reasonably quick, but it takes a long time to process a photo, I mean I'm still sitting here waiting for it to, I don't know, do whatever stitching and post-processing it needs to do. It definitely does pull in more dynamic range after doing its processing. I wanna try some in the Bokeh mode though, I actually think that's sort of where this really can shine. Stand right there, let me get a little one of these guys. Okay, ready, and that actually does look pretty nice, so as I look around the edges, it does a very nice job of kinda naturally making a depth map to sort of pull Ken out of the background. Now, it's not perfect, I can see there's a couple of little edges that aren't perfectly smooth, but generally speaking, it does a good job, and it does a good job with, for example, the camera and other things in the foreground, which sometimes trip these systems up. Then to put this in context, I have the Galaxy s10e. This is very much in the same kinda price range, and it also does have a Portrait mode, so let's see how this stacks up. Oh yeah, no it actually doesn't do as good of a job, it kinda loses some of your hat, the camera is a little bit blurry, yeah, no, this is definitely not as good of a depth map. You do see an advantage, although I will say one thing, this is so much faster, it took about a second to process, versus almost 15 seconds on the Nokia. So let's see what this looks like side by side, or at least as close as I can get it, so snapping on s10, snapping on Nokia. You know, actually, I kind of like the Nokia a little bit better here, a little bit contrastier though I guess, there's a little bit more range in the s10. One thing I will mention is that while the Nokia has a ton of cameras, they all have the same focal length, so there's no wide angle, there's no telephoto, you can use the digital zoom here which supposedly takes advantage of them, but on the s10, you do have that awesome wide angle camera, and let's be real, it's actually something that I use a lot, so, you know. - So Austin decided to let me do the light room work for this, because I actually, yeah I actually use light room, but it's cool that it comes on the phone. Because I wasn't the one that shot these, I don't have the greatest frame of reference, but, so I'm just gonna play around with the range here, I'm gonna see how much of the highlights I can actually pull away, and how much of the shadows I can pull up, and, I mean there is a lot of detail there. It actually did keep the blur, like the actual portrait blur in the background, which is neat. It even brought in those imperfections that you brought up (laughs) earlier, like around your hair. It did a good job at blending everything together and also letting you edit all that stuff in raw, so if I just do a little something here to reign in the highlights and bring up the shadows a little bit, maybe warm up the image a little too, just to give it some look. It looks pretty comparable to the iPhone. The iPhone definitely gets grainy when you push it too hard, even though it does give you a little bit of a better starting point in terms of color and exposure. The image is plenty sharp for as much as I pushed it and toned down the highlights, there's a lot of detail there still. If you're a photographer that just does mobile stuff, then maybe this is a compelling sell to you, but if you want a more well-rounded experience, then I wouldn't buy this phone just for the camera. - Let's talk about the rest of the hardware. Put simply, it's a little bit on the generic side, so it does have Gorilla Glass on front and back, although I will mention that there's actually just a little bit of give in the middle, which is not something I'm used to seeing especially on a flagship. Around front, you do have a nice display, but the bezels are a bit on the large side, sure you don't have a notch, but it would've been nice to maybe trim that down just a little bit, especially considering that there's no front-firing speaker here, there's a lot of wasted space that they could've used for stereo speakers. Also, speaking of audio, around bottom, you do have a USB-C port, but you don't have a headphone jack, so, yeah. Now the screen is actually one of my favorite parts of the phone, it's a Quad HD OLED panel, and not only is it nicely saturated, maybe a little bit too much, but importantly, it gets very bright, and it's totally usable, even when you're using it outside. Honestly, this is one of the areas where you do notice a difference between the Nokia 9 and some of the other competitors in this price point, including the iPhone 10r as well as the Galaxy s10e, it just has a better screen. Spec-wise thought, this really can't compete. So inside, you'll find a Snapdragon 845, which was great last year, but this year, it's just not quite up to the same flagship level quality of something like the iPhone 10 or the Galaxy s10e, it just falls behind. It's definitely a weak point, although I do understand that it probably took them a while to optimize the Snapdragon with all of the different cameras and stuff, but honestly, I think not only is this part of the reason why it's so slow to process, but it just isn't the most quick, fast phone out there. It's fine for normal use, but it's really not quite what I would like to see at the seven hundred dollar price point. Like basically all Nokia Android phones at this point, it is powered by Android-1, that means that not only do we have a very clean build of Android 9, but importantly, you also get a guarantee of two years of Android updates and three years of security updates, that is a big, big plus in this category. I take that back, it's not a big plus in this category, it's a big plus for literally anyone using a phone who wants to get more than a year, maybe a year and a half of updates. One of the flashier features of the PureView is the in-display fingerprint sensor. Now this is something we've seen on the OnePlus 6T as well as the Galaxy s10, both of which do it fairly well, but here, well, let me just show you. So if I tap the screen, it's okay I'll eventually do it, there we go, now I put my finger on it, and nothing, okay, I'll put it again, a-ha, it worked. Let me do that again. This is probably one of the least reliable fingerprint sensors I've ever used. Of course it's (swear word muted out) working for, Goddamnit. (bleep) There we go, there see it, look, it took me three tries that time, I'm not crazy. The Nokia 9 PureView has some very interesting tech and there are some cool parts about this phone, but at seven hundred dollars, it is playing with the big boys, and as far as I'm concerned, it's just not quite the same well-rounded package as you can get with that iPhone 10r, Galaxy s10e, now yeah, for some people I think the cameras are gonna be worth it, for the most part, not really worth the price, at least until it comes down a little bit. (mustache rustles)