N85: what’s good, what’s not!

This past month I’ve had the good fortune of playing with a Nokia N85, courtesy the great people at WOM World.

For the one month that I had the N85, I’ve had a chance to try out everything a person would try out in the time he will own it. I just did not install anything on it. But used practically every feature that is going to be used a lot. So what’s good about the N85 and what’s not? Read on and find out.

What’s Good:

The design is good overall, it’s pretty compact for a Nokia, a welcome change from the the thick phones Nokia makes. There’s a Navi-Wheel function to control your phone ala the iPod.

The AM-OLED screen is superb! the contrast! and the blacks on this baby looked miles ahead of the N82 or even the N96.

There is a notification light like the Eseries phones have, which is a very good feature and should be a part of all Nokia phones.

The keys are very well  lit, I particularly liked the ‘call’ and ‘end’ keys when they were lit up. They really lend themselves very well to the whole look of the N85. I don’t think people will have a problem with typing in the dark with this phone. Bright screen and clearly visible keypad make it a night person’s phone!

Transitions on this are the best yet I’ve seen on a FP2 device, trumps even the mighty N96.

The Active Standby (new) is one of the best revisions to the ‘traditional’ Active Standby. I love it! having everything organized vertically, allows you to actually set a wallpaper you can see properly every time. It also hides everything, so other cannot see your appointments or meetings which are for our eyes only. Good job Nokia!

Audio Themes! I love the fact that I can have an audio theme on this device! Audio themes change all the sounds of a phones. I had the ‘Space’ audio theme on my review phone and loved it!

The battery life on this baby is good. with a 1200mAh Li-Ion battery, you can easily expect it to outlast your N95, N82 and the N96 with ease. I got a good 2.5 days from this baby with regular usage. This is after I had switched off 3G scanning, adjusted the power settings a bit, etc. But you should be easily able to squeeze 2 days from it.

The 5MP camera was very quick in focusing on the subject. Almost instantaneously compared to my trusty N82. Now that’s great! The dual LED flash is way better executed on the N85 than it was on the N96.  Also having a lens cover for the Carl Zeiss is a good idea! Geo-tagging is also the fastest I have seen on a phone. The photographs are strictly ‘ok’ with the flash. There is no blue effect in the photos clicked in the darkness.

The other revolutionary thing on this phone apart from the screen is USB charging, Yes! you can charge this phone through the data cable also! I can’t tell you how nice it is to have that feature. It really helps when you are updating your phone, since you don’t need another wire plugging onto your phone.

The accessories that came with the N85 were the same you would find on the any Nseries now. the best thing about the N85 is that it has a full load of accessories.A very good thing to do!

The GPS is very good on this phone. I was able to get a lock on my location very quickly. It took only about a minute and a half for it to show me where on this planet I was! The FM transmitter is another new feature on the Nseries,. First seen on the N78, this is a nifty feature, though it still haas to be perfected to a point where it’s signal is crystal clear. 7 out of 10 times i got a good signal, but I know it could have been better!

N-Gage on the N85 is a great experience! the AM-OLED screen and the dedicated gaming keys on the other side of the slider (the slider on top of the screen) makes it very easy to play your favourite N-Gage game. Oh!, you also get a free N-Gage game activation code with this phone.  if you like gaming, this is the phone to buy!

What’s Not:

The phone with all it’s goodness has a few chinks in it’s armour. Let me tell you what I could recognize.

Firstly the design is glossy, which means that it is a fingerprint magnet. The slider function is not as smooth as the N96. The N85’s slider could become a bit wobbly after regular use.

The music keys on the second slider is also a bit hard, don’t expect good feedback from it. The keys are also a bit small! I think the keys could have been bigger!

The portion below the screen where the various keys are housed is of poor quality, That bit was already on the verge of getting peeled off on my review unit.

The biggest downside of the AM-OLED screen is the fact that you just cannot see anything in direct sunlight. The phone becomes completely unreadable in the day, if you are outside. You need to put it in some shade to get it to show you something. Too bad if you are using Maps and ‘exploring’ a city!

The camera is a mixed bag on this phone. Firstly the camera key on the slider is very spongy. You need to learn how to focus on this phone. Once you have mastered it, you will find the speed of the focusing to be blazing fast! Then recording on this phones is absolutely bad! for a phone that has 30fps recording capability it was behaving as if even 15fps was asking too much from it. There were noticeable lags in the video, during recording and at the time of playback. I think there is something severely wrong with the camera of the N85 during video recording. The dual LED is a poor substitute to the xenon flash.  I was also quite bothered that the photos rarely hit the 1MB mark. Now for a 5MP camera I expected it to be about 1MB in size. But it wasn’t This gives a good idea about the processing done.

Ok! the one thing that really put me off, on this phone apart from video recording was the music capabilities. My N82 was a better performer on all counts. the speakers on this phone are not as loud as they are on the N82, forget the N96. The ‘thump’ you can hear on the N96 with the headphones is simply missing on the N85. The wired headset supplied with it is also not that great! The N82’s wired headset gave better results!

No tabbed browsing on the phone is a bad thing! It’s high time that feature came to phones.

What else do you think is good and/or bad on the N85? let us know! Leave a comment below and  let everybody know!