25 November 2008

"Doing what’s right!"
Nokia N85 - The Review

Welcome back, Carl !

On the backside is the camera cover that is something I came to enjoy using. The lid slides very easily, enabling fast capturing of whatever moment you choose. Accidental opening never occurred to me, so this solution seems to be successful enough. Also, it doesn’t stick out of the back cover so much, so hopefully the paint on it will not wear off that easily like on the N95 classic. The dual LED flash also resides next to the camera.

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SIM card removal is a chore, battery is great

The back cover can be easily removed in two steps by slightly pressing on the release button and then pushing the cover upwards. Looking at the backside of the cover, it can be seen that it also serves as an FM transmitter antenna.

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The removal of the SIM card is a different story. You have to literally drag the card out of the recess, till you can safely remove it. Nothing deal breaking, but some users who often change SIM cards on the fly might get quite irritated of such solution.

The 1200 mAh Li-Ion battery (BL-5K) fills most of the space intended in the back. And this is where the phone truly stands out: combing the battery with the power saving AM-OLED display technology and the addition of FP2 (more on that later) the phone boasts quite an impressive stand by time, as well as increased uninterrupted music playback time.

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From my personal experience, with moderate use the battery life can be stretched out for two full days. Downloading some podcasts via wlan in the morning, then listening to music around 9 hours with headphones during the day (while not doing anything else with the phone), and the battery level is still around two or even three units left (note it's only after a very few short calls during that day).

That basically means I have to charge the battery every night. Of course it’s still possible to kill the battery at even faster rates, such as using GPS or video recording extensively. The N85 battery requires around one hour charging an empty battery to its fullest. You can charge with the supplied charger (AC-10) or USB data cable (CA-101), either way is effective.

One little side note about the locations of different communications on the phone itself. The phone benefits from the top placement of GPS receiver, Bluetooth and also wlan antenna, as it really improves the signal strength and requires less battery power to operate, especially when using the GPS. The cellular antenna however is located at the bottom part of the phone.

Lights out!

All of the main keys except the call & end keys, are illuminated in white, and are easily readable on the dark front panel. Secondary keys like the power buttons and the key block switch are the one ones that don't have it, but that's really not a problem. The call & end keys glow in a stylish green and red colours accordingly, and adds a bit to the design of the phone, perhaps reminding the user it's also a phone. All the mentioned keys have a strong backlight and I had no problems reading these keys in complete darkness.

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Symbian, shiny!

The Nokia N85 comes with the new S60 3rd edition feature pack 2 (or just OS 9.3), that was first introduced in the Nokia N78. Nokia slowly but with full determination continues to improve their S60 platform by updating the user interface, adding new functionality or optimising the existent features.

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And it’s certainly a looker. The new menu transitions makes the good old Symbian shine in wholly new colours: pop up menus, switching or closing apps, opening folders and of course rotating the screen happens in a very stylized, smooth looking transitions. Even the screensaver realistically fades in or out. It’s strange move from Nokia to have this feat turned off by default, as it’s certainly worth a look. While it has only a small impact on the memory, the phone does feel a bit snappier in menus when these transitions are disabled.

There’s also a new selection of menu views like horseshoe and v-shaped, but they’re basically pretty much useless, as the default grid view seems to be the most effective.

Another noticeable difference is the three captioned soft keys instead of two, with the third in the middle tied to the central ‘ok’ key. That change is purely cosmetic, as the function of that key remains basically the same.

Some users may also appreciate the new vertical active standby screen to the addition of the usual horizontal icon bar. It occupies less space on the screen and enables a better overview of all the different applications.

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From the other differences I’ve noticed include: faster working Search 4.10 application, internet radio app implementation with the visual radio, Nokia music store support, nearly unchanged file manager, application for downloading available updates for all installed programs; and a very handy connection manager, that gives an easier overlook of active connections and data traffic.

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The new fp2 also makes some changes to the gallery application. It’s still there, but there’s now a separate app for managing user created photos and videos, and the overall speed when browsing through these files has been increased too.

Nokia N85 is the first to support Nokia Audio themes, a package to personalize the user interface with different sounds, depending on the theme. It can be downloaded separately form Nokia site free of charge.

It’s also interesting how the phone handles battery power. When the battery charge is coming to an end, the phone automatically switches to energy saving mode that can be also activated by the user at any time through profiles application. In this mode the phone doesn’t limit the user at opening any power hungry apps (unless the battery level is critical), but sets the display brightness to its lowest and cuts down the lighting time-out to 5 seconds. This will generally help you making some important calls before the phone really dies on you.