Over the past six months, we've seen a lot of phones with three cameras and a few with four. Now, Nokia is releasing the world's first phone with five cameras on the back - the Nokia 9 Pureview.
However, instead of offering a range of options for taking photos, this phone focuses on delivering top-notch image quality. So, there's no optical zoom or wide-angle lenses. And that's probably a good thing.
What the five-camera system includes: two 12-megapixel RGB color sensors, three 12-megapixel monochrome sensors, a Time-of-Flight sensor to measure the distance of an object from the lens, and a dual-tone LED flash.
Nokia has partnered with Light – the company behind the famous 16-lens camera that first appeared in 2015 – which will provide a special chipset, called the Lux capacitor, to make the five cameras work in parallel. The Finnish brand had to choose this chip because the PureView’s main processor – the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 – can only support two cameras working simultaneously.
To capture high-quality images, the device uses a technique called image stacking, which combines details from multiple frames to produce a single image. Each lens on the Nokia 9 takes one to four frames, and the entire setup stores anywhere from 60MB to 240MB of data per photo. After that, software selects the best details from each frame and combines them into a single 12-megapixel photo.
You can also save the uncompressed photo in RAW DNG format, about 30MB in size per image, and edit it later using apps like Adobe Lightroom CC.
The company claims that the device provides 10 times more light than a simple 12-megapixel color sensor on a smartphone. It also said that the phone's cameras capture 1,200 layers in a portrait. That's impressive, considering that Google's Pixel 3 only captures two layers and produces excellent results.
Portrait photos are also compatible with GDepth depth map format, so you can adjust depth of field with the Google Photos app at any time, even months after a photo is taken.
Initial impressions of the Nokia 9 suggest that the phone is great at capturing detail and its depth sensing ability is very strong.
Adam Ismail from Tom's Guide believes that while the Nokia 9's five cameras look similar, each of them brings something different.
At Digital Trends, Julian Chokkattu thinks the Nokia 9's depth map — which is used to capture detailed portraits with blurred backgrounds — is the device's coolest feature. However, the lack of Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) could be a negative for people who may not have such steady hands.
It's clear that Nokia wants to offer high-quality images. We'll see if it can stand up to the competition once it hits the market.
