Nokia 9 PV held its value better than some almost 5 years after announcement
Probably the pinnacle of HMD Global’s ingenious engineering, the Nokia 9 PureView is the first and last smartphone of its kind. It may have continuously failed its users in many aspects (as a smartphone), but the device have successfully and respectedly brought back the PureView name in the game years after Nokia abandoned the Lumia series — the true innovators of mobile imaging.
The concept is simple. Instead of using just one monochrome and color sensor, the Nokia 9 PureView employs three monochrome sensors, and two color sensors arranged in a circular manner. It will simultaneously capture a series of images in different exposure which the dedicated Light co-processor and Snapdragon image signal processor (ISP) will stitch to create either a single JPEG image or JPEG+RAW file with greater dynamic range (up to 12.4-stops, Nokia Mobile and Zeiss claimed).
#autumn awesomeness 😁@Nokia @NokiaMobile @HMDGlobal @TheLightCo @teampureview @NokiamobBlog #nokia #nokia9 #photography #phoneography #5lenses #fivelenses #nature #capturedbylight #shotonnokia #nokiamobile #strömstad #capri #holliday pic.twitter.com/mkhweWGBMI
— Anthony Hunter (@anthonyhunter69) October 29, 2023
When it launched, it was priced lower than any other flagships in the market that time — just $699 USD, almost half the price of every flagship devices launched in 2019. So imagine the shock on my face when I went to eBay and see that it is still being sold with an average price of around $400 USD, retaining 57% of its initial value.
So I went to eBay again to look for the average prices of flagship devices launched around the same time to see if flagship from other brands also held their value better than the Nokia 9 PureView. The table below is based on the average prices of “eBay Refurbished” units.
First off, the Apple iPhone 11 Pro (256GB). The Apple iPhone has been known for retaining its value better than any other Android smartphone. But upon looking at average eBay prices, seems like the “Unlocked” 256GB variant of the iPhone 11 Pro only retains 30% of its price.
Samsung Galaxy has never been known for retaining its value, so it is no surprise that the base model of the Galaxy Note 10+ (256GB) only retains 28% of its value, while the Galaxy S10+ (128GB) only able to retain 13% of its value (mindblowing).
Moving to the Chinese territory, the OnePlus 7 Pro (128GB) retains 22% of its value while the Huawei P30 Pro (256) retains 29% of its value almost 5 years after it launched.
To be fair, there doesn’t seem to have any “eBay Refurbished” Nokia 9 PureView and most sellers I see are from Hong Kong. Still, a phone that never actually sell well during its launch retaining 57% of its initial value speaks to the power of the Nokia as a brand (if they choose to innovate).
Even more astonishing is that this trend is not only limited to the Nokia 9 PureView but extends to previous PureView devices as well, especially the Nokia 808 PureView and the Lumia 1020.
A best condition Nokia 808 PureView is being sold for around $600 USD on eBay, while an eBay Refurbished Nokia Lumia 1020 can be have for around $70 USD. Note that the market is ever-changing and this “unscientific” data is accurate as of November 2023.
