Nokia N85 Cellular Phone

Description:

It's hard to knock a phone that has all the current popular technologies, but it would have still been great for Nokia to consider new technologies for this latest N-Series range, particularly a media sharing networking protocol.

Buying choices:

• Nokia N85 Cellular Phone | $0 - $0

Users' rating:

9/10


First Look:-

Upside
It's hard to knock a phone that has everything, and as with the Nokia N-Series announcements from the beginning of 2008, the N85 has all bases covered, especially in regards to connectivity technology. Combining HSDPA data downloads, WLAN for local networking and A-GPS for navigation makes the N85 another powerful mobile from the world's leading phone manufacturer.
As a multimedia player, the N85 will support the same raft of music and video files we see in N-Series devices including the DRM protected WMA music files purchased from the Nokia Music store and will play back video on its 2.6-inch OLED colour screen. While the N85 doesn't have substantial internal storage, Nokia does plan to bundle an 8GB microSD card with the phone.
To set it apart from the other N-Series handsets, specifically the N96, Nokia is pitching the N85 as an N-Gage gaming phone with dedicated gaming controls. To emphasise this association, the N85 will come bundled with 10 pre-installed N-Gage game demos and a voucher to fully activate one of these titles. In our experience the N-Gage platform and the available games are slowly improving, so this could actually be quite an attractive offer by the time the N85 is released.
Downside
As with all of Nokia's previously released N-Series phones we'll be watching the battery closely. The N85 will employ a 1200mAh battery pack, similar to last year's N95 8GB. Nokia does seem to be refining the way its high-power handsets conserve battery life — we saw the 8GB model maintain better battery cycles than the originally released N95 — but this could still be an area for concern.
It's a shame not to see Nokia implementing new technology in the features list of the N85. One particular area of technology we'd be interested in seeing in an N-Series device is networked media sharing. Other mobile manufacturers including Samsung and Sony Ericsson are experimenting with including DLNA media sharing in upcoming phone releases. This sort of technology would be an excellent inclusion for a media-centric phone like the N85.
Outlook
The N85 is a fairly uninspiring announcement from Nokia, even though we don't doubt that it will perform in line with Nokia's other high quality N-Series devices. Except for a marginal difference in size, the difference between the N85 and the N96 on paper is so small that it seems unlikely that people will hold off buying the N96 in the fourth quarter of 2008 and instead wait for the N85 which is set for release in the first quarter of 2009.

SPECIFICATIONS:-

Battery

• Talk time
• 6.5 hours

• Standby time
• 363 hours

Camera

• Camera resolution
• 5-megapixel

• Camera flash
• LED

• Video capture
• Yes

Connectivity

• Networks
• GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, UMTS 2100

• Connectivity
• Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, HSDPA

• Data services
• GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA

• USB connectivity
• Yes

Display

• Main display: Screen resolution
• 240 x 320 pixels

• Main display: Number of colours
• 16 million

Entertainment

• Video player
• Yes

• Games
• Yes

• FM radio
• Yes

• Music player
• Yes

Functionality

• Input method
• Numerical keypad

• Voice recorder
• Yes

• Ringtone options
• Polyphonic, MP3

• Java
• Yes

• Operating system
• Series 60

• Supported audio file formats
• AAC, AAC+, MP3, WMA

• Supported video file formats
• MPEG-4

• Supported picture file formats
• JPG

• Other supported file formats
• JPG

• Video calls
• Yes

• Web browser
• Yes

General

• Phone type
• 3G, Multimedia, Smartphone, GPS

• Form factor
• Slider

• Dimensions (W x D x H)
• 50 x 16 x 103 mm

• Weight
• 128 g

Memory

• Internal memory
• 74 MB

• Memory card included
• 8GB

• Expansion slot
• microSD

Messaging

• Messaging options
• SMS, MMS

Physical features

• Available colours
• Black

• Included accessories
• Manual, Software (Windows), Charger, Stereo headset, USB cable, Memory card