Nokia's next flagship is delayed for a very good reason

A tweet disseminated by Nokia anew reveals that the sequel to the Nokia 9 PureView has been delayed to next fall. HMD Global, the company that makes the Nokia smartphones under a license from the Finnish company, reportedly has pushed back the introduction of the phone so that it could be powered by the 2020 flagship Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform. Originally, the phone was supposedly going to have the Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform under the hood.

HMD doesn't want a repeat of what occurred with last year's Nokia 9 PureView. Unveiled during the MWC show in February, the phone was already one generation behind thanks to the use of 2018's Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform. That chip was built using the 10nm process compared to the 7nm process for the Snapdragon 855. Instead of going through 2019 with flagship performance and energy consumption, Nokia 9 PureView users purchased a phone that trailed behind the competition. We gave the handset a 4.0 score out of 10.0.

The Nokia 9 PureView was the first phone with a penta-camera setup in back. Three of the sensors capture monochrome exposures and all five cameras fire at once to produce multiple images from different angles. In other words, the penta-camera replaces HDR. But that put the heat on the Nokia 9 PureView's image processing to deliver and it fell woefully short on this end. Even an update that increased the speed of the image processing on the phone didn't help.

There is talk that the phone will not be called the Nokia 9.1 as originally thought and will be known as the Nokia 9.2. It also will get a huge specs boost according to the rumors. The OG model features 6GB of memory, 128GB of storage, and an unimpressive 3320mAh battery. Originally priced at $699, we have a feeling that a Nokia 9.2 with a massive upgrade in specs will also get a massive upgrade in pricing.

The Nokia 9.1 was originally thought to make an appearance at the end of this past summer, but problems with the camera pushed back the expected unveiling to Q4. When that deadline passed, the second quarter of 2020 was the next date cited by Nokia anew. And now we are supposedly are waiting until the fourth quarter of 2020 for Nokia's next flagship to see the light of day.