25 October 2008
Nokia N85 vs. Nokia N96
Head-To-Head Battle For The Flagship Title
 The Finnish mobile phone giant is one of the firms with annoying strategy of adding many slightly differentiated products to an already extremely crowded market which make the process of comparison more difficult and therefore many consumers are likely to be confused or misled about the product quality and its position in the market.
I understand that majority of time and money are usually spent on development and that platform sharing affords manufacturers the ability to cut costs on research and development by spreading the cost of the R&D over several product. With this in mind Nokia is able to produce numerous similar phones based on the pretty much the same concept for a lesser cost!
It actually sounds good in theory and the end user should be able to get the latest Smartphone devices at a cheaper and more affordable price but unfortunately it is not the case!!! It actually rice another key question, of whether the providing of many similar phones really does enhance the consumers’ choice, or this strategy is here just to obfuscate consumer judgment and make a choice harder with a larger possibility to make mistake and get the product that doesn’t meet the basic consumers needs!?
Weird Nokia model numbering scheme is a further source of confusion! You see, most of my friends often expect that higher model numbers typically mean better performance which is again not the case; at least it is not the case with Nseries devices and therefore users often take the wrong model.
The ongoing battle between Nokia N96 and Nokia N85 is the nice example, releasing basically the same products cause huge confusion among unexpired users of S60 device and even for me it is hard to clearly say which one is better and which one meet your needs.
Carl Zeiss |
Nokia N85 |
Nokia N96 |
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*click to enlarge |
Both phones shares exactly the same form factor, both are made of glossy black plastic, with silver accents and almost the same design, both phones also features the same OS and software platform, both phones falls into the Nseries family and what is the most interesting both phones attempt to get the flagship title!
So which one is better, which is one is good enough to be a flagship device? Well, to be completely honest with you, I'm afraid neither N85 nor N96 nor any of the other Nseries phone would fall in the "premium" category and take the long lasting flagship title (obviously this is a very subjective opinion)! from the oldie Nokia N95.
The Nokia N96 might carry a high price tag, but unfortunately that doesn't guarantee sophistication, innovations and the best performances. You have to decide if the current price is right or not but believe me that you won't get any of the innovative technologies from the Nokia R&D labs and if you are expecting too much, if you are expecting real flagship device you’ll be disappointed, I am pretty sure about!
From other hand Nokia N85 does everything the Nokia N96 can do and it also brings some more than welcome innovations and new technologies. OLED screen and the greatly improved battery life, actually Nokia has managed to squeeze even more features into slightly smaller and nicer body which is great achievement.
It also has the faster hardware, FM transmitter, lens protector and few other minor improvements and it is cheaper after all! Sure, it lacks the DVB-H functionality and the huge onboard flash memory chip but considering that it comes with the 8GB microSD card and that DVB-H coverage isn’t that great it is not an issue really.
That’s it basically; unfortunately I can't give you a precise answer on question which one is right phone for you as it truly depends on your personal needs and preferences. Below you can find some comparison photos as well as the camera and video recorder samples. All photos were taken with the Nokia N95 in the poor light conditions and the quality isn’t as good as it should be so apologies because of that.
Camera trigger |
Nokia N85 |
Nokia N96 |
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*click to enlarge |
I’ll start a poll on the forum section and I hope it will help us to finally decide which device is the best Nokia S60 phone at the moment. Actually I’m really curious what you think about the actually Nseries battle? Is N96 really that bad!? Will you get N85? Or maybe you’ll skip the both devices and wait for the Tube or the next 'big thing', the flagship touch device!? These are interesting questions!? Lets discuses them over at our Symbian Freak Forum Section. Samsung and INNOV8 is out of question as this is the Nokia's in house battel!
microSD card slot |
Nokia N85 |
Nokia N96 |
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*click to enlarge |
Also I would like to apologize if my reviews are sometime to technical and/or to subjective but that’s it, I’m not professional review, neither paid editor or blogger, I’m just a freak like most of you. I’m here to share my experiences with you and to keep you up to date with the latest happening and events if I find some spare time for that. SF is just an enthusiastic site; more like a hobby that's gotten out of control lately but it is still good old freaking portal and it will always stay as is, priceless and independent!
Also I would like to apologize because of my English, unfortunately it is still not as good as it should be and I often make a silly mistakes but I hope that most of you know and understand that I am not a native English speaker. I’ll try to reorganize my daily activates to find some more time to practice on a daily basis and improve it significantly but until that you’ll have to deal with strange sort of English language ;)
Teo
Camera software |
Nokia N85 |
Nokia N96 |
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*click to enlarge |
Exterior |
Nokia N85 |
Nokia N96 |
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*click to enlarge |
Interior |
Nokia N85 |
Nokia N96 |
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*click to enlarge |
REST OF THE BEST
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CAMERA SAMPLES
Nokia N85 |
Nokia N96 |
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*click to enlarge |
Nokia N85 |
Nokia N96 |
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*click to enlarge |
Nokia N85 |
Nokia N96 |
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*click to enlarge |
Nokia N85 |
Nokia N96 |
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*click to enlarge |
Nokia N85 |
Nokia N96 |
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*click to enlarge |
Nokia N85 |
Nokia N96 |
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*click to enlarge |
Nokia N85 |
Nokia N96 |
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*click to enlarge |
VIDEO SAMPLES
Nokia N85 |
Nokia N96 |
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*click to enlarge |
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