Nokia N85 review

Nokia launched its Nokia N85 handset in India in October by pitching it as the "complete mobile entertainment package". That's quite a lofty claim but can this games-centric mobile deliver on the promise?

First impressions are positive. The N85 is pretty light at just 128g but it still feels like a nice solid piece of kit. We can’t even begin to count how many cheap and nasty handsets we’ve had to fondle over the years so Nokia has pleased us no end in this respect.

Where Nokia has disappointed, however, is the colour scheme. Much like we’d imagine it’d feel like to rent the house of your dreams with a classy exterior only to move in and find all the walls are bright pink and unchangeable, we’re not impressed by the ugly copper casing that lies beneath the classy black front. Yuck – Nokia, why?! Thankfully, we’ve since discovered you can also get the N85 completely in black. That’s more like it.

What of the rest of the phone’s aesthetics? At 2.6-inch the OLED screen is large and boasts 16.7 million colours with a 320x240 pixel resolution. The N95/N96-style dual sliding mechanism was without issue and the hard navigation and shortcut keys below the screen worked just fine, although we’re not really sure why the red end call button appeared to be split in two by a little black line.

The fact that the N85’s vital statistics are 10.3x5.0x1.6cm mean the device is pocket-friendly too. Although it’s worth bearing in mind the screen seems to attract sticky finger marks quite easily if you’re one of those people who has old, melting boiled sweets and the like lurking in the depths of your pockets.

The keypad on which all the keys are joined with the only separation occurring in three long lines under each set is a litle on the skimpy side. As such it wasn’t the easiest handset for our textaholic reviewer resulting in them frequently typing the wrong letter in error and having to delete, go back and try again; an absolute faux pas for someone who considers themselves to be the Usain Bolt of texting.

One text feature we really liked was the ability to have messages read out aloud. And by the N85 rather than us! The inbuilt linguistic goddess was called Ellen and, although she’s never going to fool anyone in human impersonation competitions, she proved very impressive.

You can also alter the speed and volume at which Ellen speaks or simply turn her off altogether – a feature we wish we had many a time during boring conversations.

A five-megapixel camera is snuggled neatly behind a sliding lens shutter, which operates smoothly. Dual LED-flash, 20 x digital zoom and Carl Zeiss optics are on tap as are the sort of camera features we’ve come to expect as the cameraphone wars hot up.

There was a tiny bit of shutter lag during our camera tests, which ensured we missed some really cute pictures of kittens. But once we’d encouraged said felines to stand still by bribing them with milk, we were able to get snap happy. The resulting pictures were of a very high standard indeed.

Video is just as splendid with the N85 capable of recording 30 frames per second and displaying captured video in all its crisp, colourful beauty. It’s here that the dual sliding mechanism really comes into its own, kick-starting the accelerometer and making your viewing pleasure that little bit more pleasurable.

The inbuilt music player was easy to use and produced high quality audio with very little feedback or distortion, both with headphones and using the in-built speaker – which we’ll sure will be put to use to annoy people on the bus by many who opt for this device. We’re not saying that makes it right, we’re just telling it like it is.

And the player offers 30-hours of music play back, which should prove great for those longer journeys, but not so good for fellow passengers if you’re part of the musical youth who don’t do headphones.

Web browsing offered a good experience with the inbuilt Wi-Fi - if you can find an available hotspot. Sadly the 7.2Mbit/s HSDPA capability will lie unused until India's mobile operator get their act in gear (although 3G rollout is scheduled to start in December this year it won't be complete until 2012, and full HSDPA is probably even further away).

Now to the Nokia N85's main selling point: the games. The N-Gage platform does deliver graphics and sound that can compare with the mobile games consoles on offer from Nintendo and Sony, but it has always suffered from a lack of support from games developers. Nokia has tried to address this by providing funds for developers to produce games for the N-Gage and that cash has allowed them to bundle no less than 15 demo games with the N85.

These all play pretty well although you only get a limited amount of game time before the purchase wall stops you in your tracks. But the good news is that Nokia includes a voucher that buys one complete game from those on offer. Thanks Nokia!

But while the try-before-you buy proposition is a nice one, 15 games is still a drop in the ocean compared to the hundreds of top-quality games available for the likes of the Sony PSP, the Nintendo DS and - these days - the Apple iPhone.

Of course, some people like to do even crazier things with their cells like actually calling people. More than once. We found the N85 to offer a high call quality volume-wise in standard mode and equally as impressive on loudspeaker mode for conference calls.

Nokia promises around just under seven hours’ talk time from its BL-5K 1200 mAh Li-Ion battery and 363-hours standby. Despite all the features we used, we found it to be quite conservative in its juice usage so wouldn’t argue with the Finnish giant’s guestimate.

All in all, we really rate the Nokia N85, but not just because of its undoubted strength as a mobile games machine. It's a solidly built and highly featured phone that does the basics well - not just the cool stuff.

**Price- Rs 27,299