Nokia 9 PureView Review - More Cameras, More Problems

The Nokia 9: A Mixed Bag of Features and Performance

One of the standout features of the Nokia 9 is its camera. The phone's camera is a very capable one, taking photos with great clarity, sharpness, and detail. However, my biggest complaint about this camera is the way it post-processes photos. It has a tendency to underexpose images in certain situations, such as bright sunny days or high-contrast scenes like low-light shots with street lamps. This can result in darker-than-expected images that require manual adjustment.

In terms of image quality, the Nokia 9's camera is very good, but it needs some tweaking to make it truly great. The post-processing issue is a software problem, not a hardware one, and HMD has acknowledged the problem. However, I'm still not confident that all Nokia 9 models have been updated to fix this issue.

The rest of the phone's hardware is fairly run-of-the-mill. It's made of glass and metal, which feels nice in the hand, but it's not particularly unique or innovative. The display on the front is an AMOLED screen, which is bright and vibrant, although it doesn't have a notch or hole punch like some other phones.

One feature that's worth mentioning is the in-screen fingerprint sensor, which is unfortunately very hit-or-miss. It had a 5% or less success rate in my first three days of use, making it practically unusable. However, after day four or five, it started working reliably around 80-85% of the time. I'm not sure what HMD did to fix this issue, but it's good to know that they've acknowledged the problem.

Performance-wise, the Nokia 9 is solid. It's powered by last year's Snapdragon A45 processor, which may not be the newest chip available, but it's still plenty capable for most users. The phone also has great battery life, with five to six hours of screen time on a daily basis, even when using social media, watching YouTube, and playing games.

But is the Nokia 9 worth the $700 price tag? In this particular price bracket, I don't think it's the best value. The OnePlus 6T is actually cheaper than the Nokia 9, and I think offers a much better bang for your buck. You get more powerful specifications, as well as Oxygen OS, which is basically like stock Android but with added customization options.

If you're willing to spend an extra $50 over the Nokia 9, you can get yourself a Galaxy S10 II, which gives you the entire Galaxy S10 experience at a lower cost. And let's not forget that the S10 II has a much better camera, a headphone jack, and a more modern design.

Overall, the Nokia 9 is an okay phone, but it has some significant issues that need to be addressed before I can recommend it wholeheartedly. The camera is good, but needs some tweaking; the fingerprint sensor was a major hassle at first, but improved over time; and performance and battery life are solid but not spectacular.

In the end, unless you're a die-hard Nokia fan or have specific requirements that this phone meets, I would recommend looking elsewhere for your smartphone needs. The competition is fierce, and there are many other phones out there that offer more bang for your buck.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso this is the Nokia 9p review this is Nokia and hm DS latest smartphone and it's an Android one phone which means a couple of things one it's running a very pure and clean version of Android there's no bloatware and it's basically Android the way Google intended it to be and 2 it also means that this phone is guaranteed software updates for at least two years and security updates for three years and the biggest highlight with this phone is the cameras on the back it has five cameras but I sort of feel like this is Nokia's or HMDs sort of publicity stunt to sort of grab headlines with this phone sort of just like a cheesy attempt to get people to pay attention to the Nokia 9 because if this phone had one camera on the back or even just two cameras in the back I don't really think a lot of people would be looking at this phone as closely as they are right now and the five cameras on the back I think would have been a lot more useful if they were five cameras of different focal lengths but that's not what you're getting here with the Nokia 9 instead you're getting to RGB sensors and three monochrome sensors which to me feels like a little bit of overkill and a little bit unnecessary and these monochrome sensors are designed to capture more death data more exposure data and more detail but there's a lot of phones out there that take amazing photos that don't have monochrome sensors one of those cameras is the pixel three and that phone has one camera and the pixel three is arguably one of the best smartphone cameras on the market right now if not the best and this phone is using five of them but the biggest problem with this camera is not the fact that it has five cameras it's really the way that this camera performs the camera app is really slow really sluggish and some people have even reported that they've had issues with the camera app crashing I haven't had that problem but this camera app is very lo you can notice it a lot when you're swiping through all the different modes there's just this big pause or delay when switching between modes and that delay or pause gets even more amplified as you swipe quickly between the different modes but the biggest issue that I've had with the performance of this camera is the processing so if you're taking a photo it takes a good five to six seconds to process a photo and you won't really notice this if you don't look at your photos immediately after you take them but if you're like me and you do like to look at your photos immediately after you take one just so you can see if it came out right or if you need to take another one you're gonna be stuck on this processing wheel of death for five to six seconds and it just makes for a really slow experience with this camera but I don't want to harp on the camera software too much because this is something that can be easily addressed with the software update and hmd is actually very aware that the camera has some issues so they do plan on rolling out an update but if you have this phone right now or you plan on buying this phone before the update comes out this is the experience that you're gonna have with this camera from an image quality standpoint the nokia 9 is a very capable camera it takes photos with great clarity sharpness and detail but my biggest complaint about this camera is the way that it post processes photos and I mean post processing in terms of the way the images look it has a very big tendency to underexpose and in certain situations like a bright sunny day or a high contrast scenario like a low-light shot with a lot of highlights from street lamps and things like that this underexposing actually works in the camera's favor but when you take the camera indoors and average lighting your photos are gonna come out a lot darker than you want them to be and I had so many photos that were underexposed that Google photos actually told me to fix the lighting issues in a bunch of my photos and again this is a post-processing problem so it can easily be fixed with a software update it's not a hardware issue so I do believe that the Nokia has a good camera and potentially even a great camera it just needs a little bit of tweaking and the experience is gonna be a lot better the rest of the hardware on the Nokia 9 is fairly run-of-the-mill it's made of glass and metal which feels really nice and it's very comfortable to hold but it really isn't all that different from a bunch of other phones out there it also doesn't have a headphone jack so if you care about that sort of stuff this phone doesn't have one the display on the front is an AMOLED screen so it's really bright really vibrant you'll notice that it doesn't have a notch or a hole punch which some people may like but because it doesn't have either one the bezel on this phone are actually a little bit thicker than normal especially on the top and bottom now underneath the display is an in screen fingerprint sensor and in screen fingerprint sensors on smartphones right now are not that great and I've had my fair share of experiences within screen fingerprint sensors and the Nokia 9 is by far the worst experience that I've had the first three days or so this n-screen fingerprint sensor was practically unusable I would say it had a 5% or less success rate and unlocking the phone and there were so many times where it failed to unlock that I was actually forced to use my pattern unlock and it got to the point where it was so frustrating to use this fingerprint sensor that I just skipped it entirely and just went straight to my pattern unlocked but somewhere around day four or day five this fingerprint sensor started working and it started working fairly reliably I would say 80 85 percent of the time it actually unlocked on the first attempt and I'm not sure what happened to fix it I know hmd is aware of the problem and they plan on issuing a software update but as far as I know I haven't received a software update unless hmd somehow silently updated this phone which I'm not even sure is even a thing for an issue like this but it works now I just don't know if I can confidently say that this has been fixed for all the Nokia nines out there at least not yet everything else about the Nokia 9 is just fine it has great performance and a solid spec sheet it is using last year's snapdragon a 45 but I really think that's that big of a deal it's not like the 845 all the Sun became a slower processor just because it's not the newest one anymore and battery life on this phone is also really good I get five to six hours of screen on time fairly consistently and that's with messaging emails social media watching YouTube and playing games on a daily basis and this phone lasts me all day every day with no issues at all but the big question with the Nokia 9 is is it worth the $700 price tag and at 700 bucks it does undercut the iPhones and galaxies of the world so you're saving a little bit of money there but in this particular price bracket I don't think it's the best value the one plus 60 is actually cheaper than the Nokia 9 and I think offers a much better bang for your buck you're getting much more powerful specifications you're also getting oxygen OS which is basically like stock Android but offers a ton more customization and if you're willing to spend an extra $50 over the Nokia 9 you can get yourself a Galaxy S 10 II which gives you the entire Galaxy S 10 experience at a lower cost and you're getting a really great camera and a fingerprint sensor that is extremely reliable that's not in the display but that's it for this review I hope you guys enjoyed it hit the thumbs up button down below if you did subscribe down below as well if you haven't already so you don't miss out on future videos thanks so much for watching and I'll talk to you guys in the next videoso this is the Nokia 9p review this is Nokia and hm DS latest smartphone and it's an Android one phone which means a couple of things one it's running a very pure and clean version of Android there's no bloatware and it's basically Android the way Google intended it to be and 2 it also means that this phone is guaranteed software updates for at least two years and security updates for three years and the biggest highlight with this phone is the cameras on the back it has five cameras but I sort of feel like this is Nokia's or HMDs sort of publicity stunt to sort of grab headlines with this phone sort of just like a cheesy attempt to get people to pay attention to the Nokia 9 because if this phone had one camera on the back or even just two cameras in the back I don't really think a lot of people would be looking at this phone as closely as they are right now and the five cameras on the back I think would have been a lot more useful if they were five cameras of different focal lengths but that's not what you're getting here with the Nokia 9 instead you're getting to RGB sensors and three monochrome sensors which to me feels like a little bit of overkill and a little bit unnecessary and these monochrome sensors are designed to capture more death data more exposure data and more detail but there's a lot of phones out there that take amazing photos that don't have monochrome sensors one of those cameras is the pixel three and that phone has one camera and the pixel three is arguably one of the best smartphone cameras on the market right now if not the best and this phone is using five of them but the biggest problem with this camera is not the fact that it has five cameras it's really the way that this camera performs the camera app is really slow really sluggish and some people have even reported that they've had issues with the camera app crashing I haven't had that problem but this camera app is very lo you can notice it a lot when you're swiping through all the different modes there's just this big pause or delay when switching between modes and that delay or pause gets even more amplified as you swipe quickly between the different modes but the biggest issue that I've had with the performance of this camera is the processing so if you're taking a photo it takes a good five to six seconds to process a photo and you won't really notice this if you don't look at your photos immediately after you take them but if you're like me and you do like to look at your photos immediately after you take one just so you can see if it came out right or if you need to take another one you're gonna be stuck on this processing wheel of death for five to six seconds and it just makes for a really slow experience with this camera but I don't want to harp on the camera software too much because this is something that can be easily addressed with the software update and hmd is actually very aware that the camera has some issues so they do plan on rolling out an update but if you have this phone right now or you plan on buying this phone before the update comes out this is the experience that you're gonna have with this camera from an image quality standpoint the nokia 9 is a very capable camera it takes photos with great clarity sharpness and detail but my biggest complaint about this camera is the way that it post processes photos and I mean post processing in terms of the way the images look it has a very big tendency to underexpose and in certain situations like a bright sunny day or a high contrast scenario like a low-light shot with a lot of highlights from street lamps and things like that this underexposing actually works in the camera's favor but when you take the camera indoors and average lighting your photos are gonna come out a lot darker than you want them to be and I had so many photos that were underexposed that Google photos actually told me to fix the lighting issues in a bunch of my photos and again this is a post-processing problem so it can easily be fixed with a software update it's not a hardware issue so I do believe that the Nokia has a good camera and potentially even a great camera it just needs a little bit of tweaking and the experience is gonna be a lot better the rest of the hardware on the Nokia 9 is fairly run-of-the-mill it's made of glass and metal which feels really nice and it's very comfortable to hold but it really isn't all that different from a bunch of other phones out there it also doesn't have a headphone jack so if you care about that sort of stuff this phone doesn't have one the display on the front is an AMOLED screen so it's really bright really vibrant you'll notice that it doesn't have a notch or a hole punch which some people may like but because it doesn't have either one the bezel on this phone are actually a little bit thicker than normal especially on the top and bottom now underneath the display is an in screen fingerprint sensor and in screen fingerprint sensors on smartphones right now are not that great and I've had my fair share of experiences within screen fingerprint sensors and the Nokia 9 is by far the worst experience that I've had the first three days or so this n-screen fingerprint sensor was practically unusable I would say it had a 5% or less success rate and unlocking the phone and there were so many times where it failed to unlock that I was actually forced to use my pattern unlock and it got to the point where it was so frustrating to use this fingerprint sensor that I just skipped it entirely and just went straight to my pattern unlocked but somewhere around day four or day five this fingerprint sensor started working and it started working fairly reliably I would say 80 85 percent of the time it actually unlocked on the first attempt and I'm not sure what happened to fix it I know hmd is aware of the problem and they plan on issuing a software update but as far as I know I haven't received a software update unless hmd somehow silently updated this phone which I'm not even sure is even a thing for an issue like this but it works now I just don't know if I can confidently say that this has been fixed for all the Nokia nines out there at least not yet everything else about the Nokia 9 is just fine it has great performance and a solid spec sheet it is using last year's snapdragon a 45 but I really think that's that big of a deal it's not like the 845 all the Sun became a slower processor just because it's not the newest one anymore and battery life on this phone is also really good I get five to six hours of screen on time fairly consistently and that's with messaging emails social media watching YouTube and playing games on a daily basis and this phone lasts me all day every day with no issues at all but the big question with the Nokia 9 is is it worth the $700 price tag and at 700 bucks it does undercut the iPhones and galaxies of the world so you're saving a little bit of money there but in this particular price bracket I don't think it's the best value the one plus 60 is actually cheaper than the Nokia 9 and I think offers a much better bang for your buck you're getting much more powerful specifications you're also getting oxygen OS which is basically like stock Android but offers a ton more customization and if you're willing to spend an extra $50 over the Nokia 9 you can get yourself a Galaxy S 10 II which gives you the entire Galaxy S 10 experience at a lower cost and you're getting a really great camera and a fingerprint sensor that is extremely reliable that's not in the display but that's it for this review I hope you guys enjoyed it hit the thumbs up button down below if you did subscribe down below as well if you haven't already so you don't miss out on future videos thanks so much for watching and I'll talk to you guys in the next video\n"