Ewan finishes his look at Nokia's OLED-screened N85 by taking it online. He also sums up his impressions, concluding that "underneath these colours is a thoroughbred". He does concede that some of the software in the N85 is "old" but recognises that this also brings maturity and stability. There are plenty of positives in the N85's package, it seems.
Read on in the full article.
What about the build quality? How can Nokia get away with releasing a product that costs so much with such dodgy build quality. Especially since this is not the first time they have done this. And their pathetic outsourced "Care" centres treat you like a fool and tell you that a wobbly slider does not mean anything is wrong with the phone. Wow, I just love that click and movement everytime I push a button. Just like my car door, you know the one that doesn't close properly? I'd love to email Nokia's CEO and see what he says about this?
You should have researched and looked into the phone better.
The ngage is not in the firmware, it has been installed on the phone memory!
If you hard reset or format your phone once, you will loose your ngage. Its not built into the firmware. Once you hardreset the phone, even upgrading to the latest firmware does not give you the ngage client. You have to download it from the ngage site and install it.
Poor show!
Another issue you forgot or maybe did not look at. OVI Sync does not support the N85 or the N79 yet!
Nearly 3 months since the phones were released and still no support! I wished this isue is highighted properly to showcase Nokia's empty promises!
Thanks for your comments. In regards build quality I've no issues with the unit I have here, even after a number of weeks with the N85.
Point taken on the N-Gage client, but I'd also be hard pushed to rember the last time I had to hard reset any of my S60 devices. Given that it's there as you open the device, the consumer awareness will be high. If it was to be deleted they would *know* it's gone and head to N-Gage.com to find it.
Given all the points raised what score would you give the N85 then?
I have read the full review but a quick comparison headline number makes things concrete and puts it in context against other new releases, N96, N79 even the 5800 and E71 although they hit different target audiences and have quite different features.
I unheartedly believe that AAS are under contact from NOKIA.
I can assure you we're not. Ewan just happens to quite like the N85....
As it happens, so did I last month, although admittedly mine was a proto....
Nokia don't pay AAS a single penny directly (there are some Nokia ad campaigns, but these come via generic banner networks such as AdSense). Or give us freebie production hardware. Like most big sites/blogs, we get to keep the odd proto though, but nothing that can be sold.
So you can put your prejudices away etc.
Ok, i sincerely dont know why i make this site one of my home pages, simply cos i enjoy reading phone reviews (especially yours and Ewan's). i posted the previous comment but i tell u im am admirer of N85 and N97 (but hate N96 with a passion). i have never owned a non-Nokia phone in my life (thou now im considering the i-phone whenever i new one comes out). I am considering the N85 on orange contract next week or so, cos just i love it.
I recently developed the thought that may be you guys are being paid by Nokia to advertise their product and so on, now i am beginning to think otherwise. Thanks for all you have doing all these years. I have to read a phone review here prior to getting a nokia phone.
Good work guys, keep it up, u r doing a great job. more grease to your elbows.
Bello
I unheartedly believe that AAS are under contact from NOKIA.
Believe me we are not, AAS is an independent site.
I don't quite know how to prove it, what would you suggest? Should Rafe take a lie detector test or something?
Regular readers will know we do actually publish articles criticising Nokia quite regularly. (For example regulars may remember our series of exposes about how N-Gage games have to be rebought when you upgrade phones, something Nokia wants to hide.)
And we don't even get review copies of everything, we have to buy many phones and apps ourselves just to review them.
But apparently if we ever praise Nokia for anything, that's proof that we're in their pockets.
Hi,
I've had my N85 since November and generally speaking its been excellent for me. For me the best feature of the phone is the FM transmitter, it can be used for both playing music and Sat Nav at the same time. The music fades out and the sat Nav gives directions and then the music fades back in again.
However, its not perfect (but its close) the worst thing about the phone is the video quality, there doesn't seem to be an adjustment for the focus. If the subject you are filming is too close or too far away then the image is very blurry and just not worth filming. I always end up just taken pictures instead.
Another issue I have is the USB charging. It will only work with Nokia power adapters. I have tried USB car adapters and USB wall socket adapters, these will allow me to charge my MP3 player or iPod via USB but the N85 will not charge.
There is also a glitch with the illumination of the keypad keys. The keypad lights up when you slide it open but then the keypad light turns off when create new message is selected. This is very annoy when trying to text in the dark.
Is it me or is there a pattern to the way Nokia release their flagship phones? I'm referring to the fact that they seem to release great heavy-on-the-spec-sheet phones, wait till the marketing department says its a big hit with the consumers and then upgrade the on-board memory (most notable the n95 to n95 8gb and the n81 to n81 8gb). I'm just wondering whether this pattern will emerge again in the form "n85 - 8 (or even 16) gb". Not that I'm complaining, its just I'm deciding whether to get this mobile or wait to see what happens upgradewise.
I really hope this strong ethos in the whole Ovi system extends to the firmware updates too. I can tell you that doing the firmware update on the N95 was a right pain when you don't own a windows PC. I tried to do it through windows running under VMware, parallels and virtual box. none succeeded. In the end I had to steal some space from a linux machines hard drive create a partition and install windows there, do the update and fix the linux machine (remove the partition, return the disk space and repair the boot sector) Clearly this is not something an average user can do and not everyone has windows!
All vendors should assume windows is not available when the firmware needs to be upgraded.
This is my only real complaint about my N95 after 2 years. Nokia do make good phones.