Nokia 9 PureView vs Nokia 8 Sirocco

Price When Reviewed

$699

Nokia launched its latest flagship, the Nokia 9 PureView at MWC 2019 in Barcelona. It’s an impressive phone with an astounding five cameras. We compare its price, design and specs against the previous Nokia 8 Sirocco to see what’s new.

Price

The Nokia 9’s price has been announced in US dollars only, at $699 which is around £550.  Here’s all we know so far.

The Nokia 8 Sirocco has an RRP of £649 in the UK, though is now available for as low as £349 from  John Lewis.

Best in Show – See our MWC 2019 Award Winners!

Design & Build

The Nokia 9 PureView features a 5.99in 2K plastic OLED display, making it slightly larger than the Nokia 8 Sirocco, which offers the same in a 5.5in display.

Like the Nokia 8 Sirocco, it uses Gorilla Glass 5 on the front and back, though the Nokia 9 is slightly thicker at 8mm, up from the 7.5mm thickness offered in the Nokia 8. It features anodised aluminium edges too.

Both phones offer wireless charging, though you won’t find a headphone jack on either models. Instead, both phones have a USB-C port, so you will need to use an adaptor. They are both waterproof to an IP67 rating.

Camera

Now for the most exciting difference between the two phones: the Nokia 9 PureView’s camera which makes a clear departure from the dual camera of the Nokia 8 Sirocco.

The Nokia 9 boasts a neat formation of five Zeiss lens rear cameras – making it the first phone ever to have so many. This includes two colour sensors, located at the middle and bottom of the formation, and three monochrome sensors on the outer points. All sensors are 12Mp.

What’s different about this set up is that instead of dedicating each lens to a particular optical shooting mode, such as wide-angle or telephoto, the Nokia 9 uses AI to combine bursts of multiple photos to produce the best possible photo. With five 12Mp cameras that can fire off up to five times, that’s up to 240Mp of data being processed.

As a result, the Nokia 9 promises a depth map of 1200 layers which allows you to fine tune the bokeh effect and blurred background portraits with great precision. You can capture photos in RAW format and edit your photos directly on the device using Adobe Lightroom (which doesn’t come pre-installed, but is available to download during set-up).

With its dedicated monochrome sensors, the Nokia 9 can take native black and white photos. This is different from other cameras that take photos in full colour but strip out hue afterwards to produce black and white photos.

Specs and features

The Nokia 9 processor sees an upgrade to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset, whereas the Nokia 8 Sirocco uses the Snapdragon 835. Despite the upgrade, it’s still behind other flagship smartphones in the market, such as the Samsung Galaxy S10, that have moved on to the Snapdragon 855.

Nokia says this lag is a result of the extended time spent on perfecting the image processing capabilities of the Nokia 9, which is admittedly, quite powerful. The cameras sit flush on the rear of the Nokia 9 too, a clear move away from the raised dual cameras on the back of the Nokia Sirocco 8.

Another key difference is that the Nokia 9 features an in-screen fingerprint scanner, mirroring Samsung’s similar move with the Galaxy S10’s in-screen fingerprint scanner. The Nokia 8 Sirocco’s fingerprint scanner is at the back of the device.

Finally, the Nokia 9 and Nokia Sirocco 8 are both a part of the Android One program, which offers the same unadulterated Google experience you would find on a Google Pixel phone. This means you get a clean UI free of any bloatware – as well as unlimited storage on Google photos, access to Google Assistant and frequent Android updates.

The Nokia 9, like the Nokia 8 Sirocco offers 6GB RAM and 128GB Storage. The Nokia 9’s battery is also more powerful compared to the Nokia 8 Sirocco, at 3,340mAh, up from 3260mAh.

Here’s a breakdown of the main specs of both devices:

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