Nokia N85
I was given the Nokia N85 to play with over the Dec / Jan holidays. Compared to the other phones on the market, the N85 stood out. I’m a huge Nokia fan and for the last year and a half, I was disappointed with Nokia’s releases. Yes, I’m eagerly awaiting their ‘answer to the iPhone’ as its been dubbed – the Nokia 5800.
Back to the N85, it was not as chunky as the N96, but rather light. The large bright screen was ideal for browsing the net and playing games. The main reason we were given the phones was to test the games on the N-gage* platform.
I was disappointed that the game One (very similar to Street Fighter) crashed the phone after every fight. I ended up playing a lot of Poker, some Tetris, Fifa and Star Wars Force Unleashed.
I couldn’t use the phone as my primary one because I was given a sim card preloaded with airtime – so it was used for surfing and gaming. The battery life was decent – if I didn’t play games everyday, it would have lasted much longer.
I downloaded the latest Opera Mini and it supports full web browsing. I picked up 3.5G most of the time, which was really fast. If you use your phone to surf the net, then the N85 would be ideal.
If you use the Gmail application on your mobile, then you will be slightly disappointed as it runs very slowly on the phone. Although, I think this problem is more a Google one than Nokia.
Some Nokia N85 specs:
- 2.6″ 16M-color OLED display
- 5MP camera
- Symbian OS 9.3 with S60 3.2 UI
- 3G with HSDPA support
- Wi-Fi
- USB and Bluetooth v2.0
- FM transmitter
- 8GB memory
- Built-in accelerometer
- 3.5 mm audio jack
- TV out
- Stereo FM Radio
- Dual slide design for gaming and audio
Its definitely one of the better Nokia’s out there but I think Nokia is trying too hard to break into the mobile gaming market. They should stick to what they’re good at – making phones.
* Current phones supporting the N-gage platform are 5320, 6210, N78, N79, N81 8GB, N82, N85, N95, N95 8GB, N96 and launching soon, N97.
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