It has been over a year since the launch of the Nokia 9 PureView, HMD Global's ambitious five-camera phone, with no sign of an update to that model.

Nokia's Mobile World Congress plans saw themselves delayed, but resulted in the launch of the Nokia 8.3 as its first 5G handset, moving into a sub-flagship position sitting on the Snapdragon 765 platform.

Nokia's flagship remains ominously absent, with rumours of updates to the Nokia 9 coming and going. Again we've seen it reported that the Nokia 9 will be refreshed in the second half of 2020. 

This rumour originally cropped up in January 2020 and with no leaks in the run up to Mobile World Congress, it's safe to assume that there never was a plan to launch the phone there. It's been said for a while that HMD Global is going to skip the 9.2 update and move straight to the Nokia 9.3. 

That will fit in with other devices that the company launched this year, with Juho Sarvikas, chief product officer from HMD Global, explaining that with the Nokia 8, it skipped the 8.2 increment as it was moving straight to 5G.

When the Nokia 9 PureView launched, it was sitting on old hardware. It launched on Snapdragon 845 rather than 855 that its rivals did. At the time Nokia said this was because of the development needed to make the hardware work with the advanced imaging system, but the message that potential buyers got was that it launched as an out-of-date phone. It got a muted response, wasn't widely adopted and we didn't even manage to secure a review device. 

That's what HMD Global will need to avoid with any future Nokia 9 update: this will slot into a flagship position and it needs to compete with rival device like the Samsung Galaxy S20 or OnePlus 8, as well as having its unique selling point - which we assume will be the five camera system. 

We're seeing dribbles of information coming through on the Nokia 9.3, but the flagship level phones still remains elusive for the new Nokia.