Review- Nokia N85

{ January 31, 2009 @ 8:07 am } · { Reviews }

Box Open… What you get ?

The phone of course…

Battery.. BL-5K (1200 mAh)

AD-54 Adapter with a compatible, 3.5mm jack, headphone.

Data Cable- Type CA-101. Micro USB for charging via PC/Laptop USB Port.

A software DVD which includes OVI Suite as well. + the PC Suite.

Some manuals (who needs them anyway)

8 GB Micro SD.

I’d give the package a 7/10. This is with respect to the price tag that it carries.

First impression: Smaller than I expected. Its compact, easy to hold, handle. Ideal size.

The front keys are a bit stiff. There is no qualitative drawback, but a bit stiff to press. All the buttons up front (except the D pad and the media key) are under one single panel. The selection, menu and cancel key’s light up when you press them. They go absolutely invisible when the phone is in power save mode.

Construction: A “wee bit” dodgy. It seems like it’s the construction, not the quality of the materials that’s giving the problem, in my opinion. The slider wobbles. Not an exaggerated movement but still movement none the less.

Construction Quality: 6/10. They just need to improve their sliders. N series.

Turn on: SCREEN!!! Brilliant! By far the best of Nokia I’ve ever seen.

This should become a standard really. Viewing video is a pleasure on this one. Nokia has installed some videos on it just to show off its potential, and why not. The colors, contrast are top notch. Gives the impression that it’s a bit too colorful, like exaggerated colors but I’ve nothing to complain ‘bout it to be honest. 9.5/10

Keypad:

Slide up.. the numeric keys. The numeric keys are a bit softer than the front keys. Better than the front panel keys in my opinion. No physical or tactile problem encountered throughout the usage

Slide down.. music keys. Impression same as above.

Menu Browsing:

Some user earlier posted that the Phone was rather slow. I personally do not find any problem with its speed. Compared to other S60 phones it may be slow, but it is negligible. Its safer to put it this way the phone may be a bit (only a bit mind you, hardly noticeable. Definitely not annoyingly enough) than some other phone like N82, but its not slow. With the Effects On the lag is the graphical transition lag. Like its meant to be like that, the effect. Like going from menu to sub-menu the transition effect will take its time.

N-gage:

The phone comes with 15 N-gage games ready to install. List of Games:

Asphalt 3: Street Rules by Gameloft, Block Breaker Deluxe by Gameloft, Bounce by Nokia Games Publishing, Brain Challenge by Gameloft, EA SPORTS FIFA 08 by Electronic Arts, Hooked On: Creatures of the Deep by Nokia Games Publishing, Midnight Pool by Gameloft, Mile High Pinball by Nokia Games Publishing, Reset Generation by Nokia Games Publishing, The Sims 2 Pets by Electronic Arts, Snakes Subsonic by Nokia Games Publishing, Space Impact: Kappa Base by Nokia Games Publishing, System Rush: Evolution by Nokia Games Publishing, Tetris by Electronic Arts, and World Series of Poker Pro Challenge by Glu Mobile.

These are all trial versions. However, there is a serial number provided with the phone with which you can activate a game (whichever you want to) to get full access to it.

Applications:

Applications that come preinstalled (the unit I have) are:

Quickoffice, Adobe PDF, SkyeQuiKey, Advanced call manager and We : offset.

Multimedia:

Music Player: Comes with an 8GB memory card.

It’ll actually fit my entire music collection, and still leave some space.

Sound quality compared to N82… big improvement IMO. Better bass, less shrieks, wholesome sound. A lot better than the N82 actually. Been using the phone as my mp3 player quite extensively over the past week or so. I’m PRETTY satisfied with its performance. I won’t mind taking this instead of my Ipod touch as my MP3 player just to save space. But of course the battery life, imposing screen size of the touch just floors this one. But sound quality is definitely better than N82 (haven’t used N78, 79 and 96 so can’t comment about these. Don’t recollect N81’s quality.). Also made me appreciate just how good, utility wise, the two way slide can be (dedicated music keys, generally speaking). A very convenient solution, just slide it while its in your pocket without having to look at the device. Featuring on all MM centric devices these days, very very handy. Even the Ipod touch (a dedicated PMP) fails at that, now doesn’t it ? :-/

Save the songs on your memory card, playlist gets updated automatically. Traversing through the music menu, list is swift- very swift. No lags for me.

Music quality: I’d give it a serious 9/10. Yes I like it a lot.

Camera: Compared to N82, which is of course the imaging flagship for Nokia. The shutter lag (compared with N82) is an improvement IMO.

Pics 1, 2 and 3

Not many pics. I’ll be posting some later, comparing with N82 as well.

Symbian: Version 9.3, rel. 3.2… FP2. Hence, adding the “effect”. S60 has never been the “bling” phone when it comes to the UI. But the new “Haze” theme does look quite nice with the effects. But that’s just one theme, rest of the preinstalled are pretty lame (with the effects on).

They also have added this new feat called “Audio Themes”

Each theme has a set of tones preset for specific events… like call events which has the Ringtone setting for voice and for video call. Messaging events: Text, Email, Message Sent Tone. Calendar: Calendar alarm, Clock alarm. Battery: low, full, charging and recharge battery tones. Enhancements: BT headset connected, disconnected, Car Kit connected, disconnected. Even menu events: menu open, close. And of course Karim’s favorite, the desperately seeked, Phone handling events: slide up, down, memory card inserted, removed… etc. You can assign a tone or put it to silent to each event separately.

Menu: The classic S60 would have only 2 types on menu views, namely, Grid and List right ? They have added a few more….

Grid and List are known. Grid being he classic 3X4 icon set and list being the top-down list.

Horseshoe:

V-Shaped:

The rest is the standard S60 stuff.

Battery Life: With average usage I’m getting 2+days out of it. Which should be good enough for the average user.

Conclusion: There has been a lot of talk, criticism about the device’s construction. The criticism is somewhat justified IMO. The build quality does fall short of expectation. Given the kind of criticism Nokia has consistently seen regarding the N series build quality. One would imagine that they would have improved it by now. However, the construction is a bit suspect. I find the materials to be perfectly fine, good actually. To my surprise the slider hasn’t got loose upon usage. It was a bit disappointing to see the slider wobbling right out of the box making me feel that if it is this way right now, what after even a months usage ? But it hasn’t deteriorated. Which is encouraging. There have been N series with worse build, N95 classic. This is much better IMO. The materials are pretty decent.

Positives:

• Good size.
• Nice screen… This should become a standard really.
• Great sound quality.
• A bit above average cam IMO. Certainly not at the top of the list, but its not meant to be. That shutter is great. Nice implementation. Shutter Lag has reduced quite a bit IMO compared to N82.
• Above average battery life. Better than the N82s and 95s etc.

Negative:

• First and foremost… the obvious. Construction. It has put off quite a few users. A bit exaggerated reaction on the forum IMO.
• Front keys, D-Pad, call/disconnect keys n all are stiff. They’ve provided 15 games, for the first time, with a device; so I assume its meant for gaming purpose as well. The keys, however, are not practical.

All in all this is today’s average phone based on the feature set. I personally will rate it as a phone that can be used as an MP3 player (meant for that strata of the market) just cuz I find its music quality to be v.good. Of course, you will require a better pair of headphones but even my Ipod touch sounds lousy with its stock HPs. Using the Creative EP630 atm.. cost me less than 20US $. I am satisfied with its performance. Compared to the Ipod touch I do not see why this can be declared equally good (just shows how poor the touch is actually. Pay 500$ for a dedicated PMP and the quality is not what you would expect.)

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