I'm liking (though not yet loving) my new N86, but the current latest Firmware, v11.043, still has a HUGE raft of major software bugs.
Rest assured, the issues below will NOT apply to everyone, and indeed, those it does affect might only be a small percentage (or not, as the case may be). But they ARE REAL for those it affects, and I have re-installed the Firmware clean twice now, to all but rule out "extra added software" as the culprit.
So just to make a list, in no particular order, of the issues and bugs with the N86:
It has a relatively small amount of Free C: Internal Memory, and worse, current software policy/behaviour with Nokia, is that certain applications, such as N-Gage updates, Maps Updates, Email, QuickOffice, and numerous others, can ONLY be added to C: memory, not E: As a result, after less than a week, my own device has only 14.2MB of free C: memory, even though I have installed every app that gave me a CHOICE, to E:
Auto-rotate - on certain occasions, the screen auto-rotates as you lock it. If it does this just as you are locking it, with a NUMERIC KEY-GUARD, then on occasions, when you unlock the phone, it is FIXED in the wrong orientation, and there is nothing you can do to correct it. In fact this bug is so severe, that when it does this, you can't even so much as turn the phone off. The power button does not even work, so a full battery pull is required. (Weird, given that you can use the phone fine, but just in the wrong orientation, so it's strange the power button doesn't work).
Camera wrong auto-rotation - weird one indeed this, but for no sensible reason, certain photos taken in normal Landscape orientation, with the phone held correctly, get auto-rotated to portrait orientation once shot, and are thus the wrong way round. I can understand it doing this the other way round by mistake, and not correctly rotating a portrait shot photo, using the accelerometer, but electing TO rotate a correctly shot Landscape picture, is bizarre indeed. But it has done this to me several times now.
Slide Auto-lock - when set to automatically lock the keypad when the slide is closed, most of the time this works fine, but other times, closing the slide does nothing, and worse, to prove it is a bug, when this problem does happen, even the hardware lock button on the side, then has no effect, thus confirming it to be a full bug. It does this for me from time to time, but a cure is to go back into the slide handling settings, and turn it off then back on, then closing the slide will automatically lock the keypad again. Mmmm.
Responsiveness/Slowness - even when clean fresh booted (that is, as a new phone, out of the box), response rate in the messaging application is very poor, compared to most other older Nokias. A key way to demonstrate this, is to receive a message whilst something else is running on the phone. Switch to the messaging to view it, and then click "Reply" to respond... then sit back and time the delay it takes before you are actually ready to start typing in the editor. And as this is a key feature/use of the phone, it's most notable, and most frustrating.
Predictive text and password fields - The newer Webkit Browser version seems much faster than prior Nokia Web Browsers, this is one of the few good things I can say that is faster with the phone. But if you visit a webpage that requires a username and password, and you are a predictive text user, then it accepts predictive text for the username box, but also remains in predictive text mode for the secret password entry. Previous Nokias were intelligent enough to know this was a password field box, and automatically switch to multi-tap for password entry. With the N86 you have to MANUALLY change to Muti-tap, by cycling through the entry methods, which curiously, and confirming it is a bug, does not then even have an option for predictive text - you CAN'T cycle back into predictive text if in a password field. So this is a genuine bug, by it not switching to multi-tap for password boxes automatically.
Zero (Internet) key - maybe this is just a FP2 issue, not an N86 one, but no matter what I set, and where I set it, in terms of default homepage, when I do a long press of Zero, to launch the internet, instead of a pre-set homepage loading up, all I ever get is a list of bookmarks first that I have to choose from, and it does not go straight into the web proper.
"Duplicate a contact" - this menu option within the Contacts Application, is simply gone, omitted, no longer there, despite it being in all previous Nokia phones (either under this name/description "Duplicate", as it is on phones like the E71 etc, or just under the "Copy" option as on phones like the E90, N82 etc). Clarification, the N86 does have VARIOUS copy options, but these are NOT the "Duplicate an existing contact" option that I refer to. These are to copy an entry, invisibly as it were, as a backup, onto the memory card itself, or to Copy from phone to sim based memory. There is NOT an option to start with an existing contact in your phone, and then to "Duplicate this" so that you can finish off adding additional info and then save it as ANOTHER extra contact with slightly different info. You can do this on previous phones however, and this indeed seems a firmware error/omission as even the user guide refers to a "manage contacts" option which is not the same as the guide describes, which refers to being able to do this action.
There's probably a few things more, but that's all I can think of for now, and I am conscious that I might well be already over the character limit for an individual message post.
Feel free to chip in with any more you lot know of, or any comments anyhow.
EDIT, 12/09/09 - See additional post further down for a newly discovered charging bug.