In this, the second part of Ewan Spence's chatty look at the Nokia N85, he carries on from part one's look at the hardware and styling of the device. Running S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, the N85 sees tweaks to the interface and some of the built in applications to help the user experience. How successful have Nokia been?
Read on in the full article.
Is the access point handling improved at all on this device, or does each application have its own definition, or else ask you every time how you want to connect? Can you configure some APs (home/work WiFi) to connect without asking and others (3G) to always ask? Does RealPlayer still have its own independent settings, or use the AP that the OS tells it?
Note that Ewan's in Paris at Le Web doing his podcasting/media thing, so won't be back to answer questions for a couple of days....
You missed a few points -
* The Memory Card icon is displayed on the standby screen all the time!
It is pretty irritating. When they are providing the buyer with a card out of the box itself, then notifying the user that he is uing a card makes no sense!
* The One Line view on the Inbox is not available.
I really miss this feature, after having the one line view, the current 2 line view simply looks too bloated.
* I cannot add most of my contacts to the Contacts carousel in the MultiMedia Menu. The program crashes with a kernal error. (This error was exclusive to the Contacts carousel before the Maps 3 Beta fiasco on N85, since then, it has spread to other apps.
Although the overall improvement introduced by FP2 are amazing, things can get a hell lot better if the small edges are smoothened out still.
Good review, i am desiring to retire my N95 and i am in betwixt which device to replace it my needs Good Ram big screen and good camera this is for business so no whistles needed any advice about the current models thanks
@neilhoskins
Yes, Access point handling has received a major revamp!
Your access points are now catagorised under 3 heads and also prioritised-
Internet
Multimedia msg.
WAP Services
You cann add the WiFi hotspots and connections of your Office & Home to the Internet catagory.
And in some of the apps, i guess those which have updated themselves for proper FP2 support, you can assign the Internet catagory as the Access Point. So that app will look for all the internet connections according to their priority and connect to them.
And also, you can set the access points to be connected automatically or After Confirmation. This setting is per access point. So all my Wifi Connections are automatically connected, where as i am asked for confirmation to connect to my cellular data plan.
@alsiladka
Thanks for the detailed reply. That sounds like a huge improvement.
Sorry, another question.
If updates are now incremental, and don't affect installed software and contacts/calendar, then is it actually possible to re-flash the whole phone if I want to?
good to know about the access points! I am currently using smart connect on my E90 and that comes close but still not perfect
java applications like gmail still ask me a lot of time if i want to connect
and also (i have the setting enabled) it doesnt drop the gprs connections if there is a better connection found (home wifi). I would really like that that would happen.
neilhoskins wrote:Sorry, another question.
If updates are now incremental, and don't affect installed software and contacts/calendar, then is it actually possible to re-flash the whole phone if I want to?
I'm still undecided about the multimedia menu. While I have no better idea, it still seems that there are too many options to reach apps and functions in s60.
It would be nicer if Nokia could come up with one, very well designed setup (the standby screen can remain a separate choice) for its OS.
Ewan, would you be able to do a more detailed description of how exactly the App update is working? I'm interested and I don't have an N85 nearby to dig deeper into it.
Even i have been thinking of how to flash the phone completely. I guess you will have to do it in many steps now. Uninstall all the apps, restore the factory settings, and reinstall the firmware via NSU.
But the problem we shall face is losing the n.Gage saved games! You can backup the phone memory, but restoring it would ruin the purpose of a complete flash.
Hope Nokia makes backing up ngage saved games easier.
BTW, does anybody know what all is backed up when you backup the phone memory via File Manager?
My phone memory backup was 30MB in size, when about 60MB of my phone memory was filled. What all does it include and what all does it leave out?
Hello,
I think it will be nice if you always used default themes in your reviews. I think people want to see how the device looks by default. It's is more representative of what one will get if buying the device.... and well, I particulary can't stand sunrise theme ;-P