The Nokia 9 will be a solid flagship contender, and here's why

Nokia is back, and it means business. HMD Global, the company that is exclusively licensed by Nokia to produce handsets with the cult branding, has already released three Android smartphones and it's planning three or four more by the end of the year. That being said, the currently released models have yet to make their way to the US, but Nokia has stated numerous times that they'll be available globally by the end of June.

Now, if I was a betting man, I'd say that the global debut of Nokia-branded Android handsets will also come with an exciting announcement – the Nokia 9. The alleged flagship by HMD has long been circulating the rumor mill, and recently we saw some prototypes leaked in photos and ran through popular benchmarking apps.

But, what can we expect from the Nokia 9? Will it live up to the Nokia name, and will it be on-par with the rest of the flagships this year? Everything so far suggests that HMD will present us with an outstanding device, and I personally believe that it will be a solid flagship contender. Here are a few reasons why.

Classic design and solid build quality

Thanks to Evan Blass, the prolific leakster, we've already caught a glimpse of what could be the Nokia 9. Said leak was later reaffirmed by the photos of an encased device that was allegedly HMD's upcoming flagship.

If we assume that the device from both of these leaked materials is indeed the Nokia 9, we can draw some pretty good conclusions of what the phone will feature in terms of design. It will look a lot like what we've seen from Nokia so far – a 9:16 display, on top of an aluminum unibody. What will set it apart from its less-powerful siblings is the vertical dual-camera setup.

This design is a safe bet for just about any manufacturer – a classic approach to smartphones, with no questionable aspect ratios, edge-to-edge displays, or squeezable sides. Just pure smartphone, through and through. Sony appears to be the only other major manufacturer that went this way, and the Xperia XZ Premium easily took the 2017 cake in my book, so far.

What will it take for Nokia to beat Sony, though? One word – durability. When it comes to torture tests, few people manage to do them correctly and be objective. One of them is the YouTuber known as JerryRigEverything.

“If Apple and Samsung don't step up their game, this phone is going to win the most durable ... of 2017 easy.”

He made two videos with the Nokia 6 – one of his already-iconic “Scratch, Burn, and Bend” tests and a teardown video. These both confirmed that the Nokia 6 is built to withstand a lot of abuse, thanks to the huge amounts of aluminum inside it. When Jerry removed the screen, an aluminum sandwich was revealed, secured with a crazy amount of screws and holding all the internals between the two metal plates.