Nokia N85 Review

It's been exactly a month since I received my new Nokia N85 phone, which is based on Symbian S60 3rd Edition. I am very impressed with this phone till date thanks to open Symbian platform which enables host of useful 3rd party apps which I will cover later on.

The reason for buying Nokia N85 was simple, which was I needed something new :D. I had before this LG VU and iPhone, ebayed LG VU, got some money from it, had Amazon gift cards and rebates going on this phone, which made it a steal for me to buy. And left with iPhone which is non 3G and where I live it has poor reception quality, I was left with no choice but to look out for a new phone.

The last Nokia phone that I owned was in 2004 which was Nokia 6230 based on Symbian S40 platform. It was a feature packed and it was very revolutionary of it's time, partly because it supported EDGE networks and I use to connect my PC with data cable and for just Rs 500 bucks pm, I had unlimited internet at Edge speed, this was a dream connection for any internet junky at that time.

Nokia N85 is the most underrated but most feature packed Symbian cell phone till date, It has OLED (Organic LED) display which displays colors so bright and crisp and at the same time as each pixel is illuminated by itself, it saves a lot of battery power too as opposed to back lit screens mostly seen today. It is a dual slider just like Nokia N95 but it is so slim and fits easily in the pocket.

Some of the features I liked most about Nokia N85 are-:

1) OLED Screen with 16 million colors [iPhone has 18 bit or 212k color screen].
2) 8 GB of Memory
3) 3G/3.5G capabilty and at the same time doesn't consume whole a lot of battery.
4) Email support, not only it support POP or Exchange but also IMAP which my school email supports, so with internet enabled I can check email wherever I am and also send them too.
5) Plethora of 3rd party apps. I installed 'Joiku Spot' premium app which makes it a WLAN hotspot just like router and one can make it secure too using WEP. So now I am able to connect my laptop to internet using my phone without paying ATT 60$ pm for tethering services. 'Fring' is also a cool app which lets me connected to different IMs such as GTalk, MSN, Yahoo, Skype and Social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Orkut etc.
6) Since it has inbuilt GPS chip, I installed Garmin XT mobile, I found it so useful, specially when you are in a new city and you want to go to some particular location; just enter the destination address and it's voice activated turn by turn software will help you reach there.
7) It has Skyfire browser which support Flash, which iPhone is missing and now I realize how important is flash, Hulu is flash based, CNN videos are flash based and most of the online movies are flash based and all can be easily be watched on Nokia.
8) From Music point of view, it's music capability similar to iPod but it has Internet radio, FM radio which are so much cool and along with it comes FM transmitter which means whatever you are hearing can easily be transmitted to your car's music system using FM frequency.
9) It's Calender and To-Do list is very nice and one can see on home screen, so no more missing of important deadlines.
10) It has search capability just like desktop environment of Mac or Windows. It can search whole cell phone or internet based upon search criterion.
11) It has auto rotating screen depending upon how you are holding your phone.
12) Ability to do multitasking, like music player is running while you are browsing internet or reading email.
13) One can use ATT internet to make VOIP calls such as on Google Talk or Skype and hence saving service minutes.
14) Last but not the least, it has 5 MP Carl Zeiss Optics camera which was my main motivation for buying this cell phone. I don't have to carry dedicated digi cam now. I can shoot pics or record videos and upload to sites such as flickr or picasa right away, which is very cool.


There are some Con's too about this phone-:
1) Back side is plastic so feels cheap.
2) The slider feels unbalanced sometimes.
3) It hangs when many applications are open simultaneously.
4) Should have had Qwerty keyboard.

It's been a month and I am very impressed with this phone, more than calling it has so many features not just one like touchscreen which keeps you occupied. The potential could only be realized if it is internet connected. After owning iPhone, LG VU and Blackberry 8800, I found this one is the best. If one is paying extra for internet with phone service, this phone uses internet potential of mobile device to it's peak.