HMD Global had no shortage of Nokia related announcements to bring to Mobile World Congress, currently taking place in Barcelona, Spain.

At  a special pre-briefing session on Friday, and subsequently over the weekend at the show, HMD Global debuted a photographer’s dream – a device with five rear cameras that kicks mobile photography up a few notches.

Named the Nokia 9 PureView, the device uses its five 12 megapixel cameras together, and combines two RGB sensors with three monochrome sensors to maximise the amount of light and detail that the cameras can capture. According to Neil Broadley, head of product marketing at HMD Global, the five cameras working together will thus be able collect up to 10-times the amount of light than a single colour sensor of the same type.

All that information is then combined into one 12 megapixel final image, with the company enthusing that every image captured by Nokia 9 PureView is HDR (high dynamic range). More specifically, the device will be able to capture  up to 12.4 stops of dynamic range per scene, which in practical terms means  we should see terrific detail in shadow, midtones and highlights of an  image.

That’s not the only arena where the five-camera array offers an edge. The cameras also enable the device to shoot with a full scene 12MP depth map that  enables background blur and bokeh. As well, Broadley elaborated, users will be able to capture images with a depth of field ranging from 7 cm from the phone up to 40 metres. The latter, incidentally, can be adjusted in Google Photos subsequent to capturing the image.

Based on a few initial images that were apparently taken with the phone, the photographic quality looks superlative. 

Additionally, the device is able to capture images in uncompressed RAW “DNG” format, while a partnership with  Adobe, means users will be able to use Lightroom to edit their images using Adobe’s much-loved software. Furthermore, the company noted that the Nokia 9 PureView will also offer another feature that pro photographers treasure - exposure compensation.

With regards to other specs, the device is set to be no slouch, sporting an Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset with 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, a 2K OLED PureDisplay 5.9”screen, integrated Qi Wireless charging, and a fingerprint sensor within the screen as is quickly becoming the norm in flagship devices. Video, incidentally, will be captured by a single camera, but the device will still capture 4k Ultra HD video, while three high quality microphones on the device will handle sound.

As for price, all indications are that you won’t be adding the Nokia 9 PureView to the list of Things I Want But Would Never Spend That Kind Of Money On. In dollars terms, it is coming in at $699, so hopefully we would be looking at the R10 000 to R14 000 price range (that is not official and rather our impression).

As for whether the Nokia 9 PureView will wrestle the photography  king crown from the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, we will see in March. However, based on a pre-production model we saw at HMD Global’s headquarters, we’d say Huawei has a real fight on its hands.  

To hear about the phone - and some of the other announcements - from HMD Global itself, take a look at the video below.