Continuing with the Nokia N85 - Review pt1

[slitchfield]

Ewan's well into his long term Nokia N85 review period now, and here he brings us a chatty overview of its hardware, looking in particular at the OLED screen, the fingerprint-attracting styling and the slightly hit and miss d-pad. Read his N85 review - part 1.

Read on in the full article.

N85 N96
Audio Themes x
USB Charge x
Nokia Std.Charg x
Navi Wheel x
DVB-H x
Graphic Acc x
Dual Proc x
Internal SD x
Accu 1200mAh 950mAh
Camera Cover x
Front Sensor x
FM Transmitter x
HW Decoder MP4 ? x
+/- Map Keys x very nice feature to zoom in and out of maps
???

[KamHo]

One little advantage to the screen that I particularly liked is that because pixels are always 'lit up', the small digital clock on the standby screen is always glowing - very useful during the night...

I have read something to this effect several times now but have been unable to get my the clock on my N85 standby screen to operate in this way. The screen goes completely black. Any idea what setting I might need to change?

[pennas]

Originally Posted by KamHo

I have read something to this effect several times now but have been unable to get my the clock on my N85 standby screen to operate in this way. The screen goes completely black. Any idea what setting I might need to change?

Settings / General / Personalisation / Themes / Power Saver

.. and select your chosen screensaver. I'm using the 'Now Playing' one, which gives you the time, along with either the current music player track, or the date if no music is playing.

I love this feature!

[KamHo]

pennas,

Thanks. I was misinterpreting what the selection screen meant!

[neilhoskins]

"...dashboard of a Golf GTi, screaming across the roundabouts of Milton Keynes..."
Blimey, Ewan, you must be as old as me to remember that. But in my case it was a 205GTi.

What really disturbs me on this phone is that whenever you connect with cable to your computer to charge the battery, you are also "mounting" the external memory to the computor, thereby blocking all phone access from the memory.

This stops the media player and prevents you from updating your podcasts whilst charging the battery.

I really wish that the next firmware would include an option where it was possible to charge battery from computer without actually connecting to the computor in any data-mode, in addition to PC Suite and various other data connections an option "battery charge only" would be handy.

Since 95% of the time I connect to my computer I only want to charge up - normally I do all my normal syncs over BT, only once in a seldom when I want to change music I actually want USB access to my mem card.

[neilhoskins]

Jaclu has raised a very important issue. One infuriating thing about the podcasting app is that if you're in data transfer mode while it's trying to download, it switches to putting podcasts on the phone memory rather than the SD card. You then find you're running out of memory and have to root around in the settings to put it back.

[marketsqhero]

Will someone please explain how to get the date/time & clock to stay on permanently?

Mine goes off after about 30 minutes...

Has anyone been able to get USB charging to work in the car. I've tried several USB adapters for my car and when I plug in my N85 it turns on and displays a static battery icon but will not charge!!

I am on the road all day and this means that I can't use my FM transmitter for fear that my battery won't last the whole day... This is very annoying!!...

[Unplugged]

Will it not connect in PC Suite mode?

[davesmith]

from the All About Symbian N79 review it said that it wasn't as fast as the N95, e.g. playing Mobitubia.
Is this the same case with the N85? as I thought these 2 phones were identical processors etc. (I am looking to finally replace my N95)

[gilcomnz]

Like the most of the people that read this blog, are quite technicially minded & would just love this phone. I have previously had most of the N Series models & a couple of iPhones BUT the features of the N85 are just amazing. Sure, it has all the "normal" features you would expect in a N series phone but when combining the FM transmitter with the builtin music player & voice Nav on Nokia Maps, Its just wicked. I hoped in the car this morning & activated the FM transmitter to my car radio & started playing my music playlist & then started Nokia Maps & enetered a destination & away I went happy As !!!. The turn by turn nav instructions now come over the music playing on the car radio, beautifily clear. This little phone gives you the features of an expensive in car Nav system.

DESTINATIONS - I also use the VOIP client in the phone & has taken me a while to get to grips with the new DESTINATIONS option in FP2. I know it's very logical in theory but I had the problem of when I left my WIFI & the phone needed to access the 3G network, it would bloody prompt me every time unit I worked out you can edit the 3G connection & set to Automatic & now it works seemlesly.

THANKS - To the AAS guys over there in the UK. I learn so much form the AAS podcast & this site.

NOKIA N85 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED if you dont mind a slightly smaller screen & T9.

No one speak about the very bad slide of the N85 ?
It's so loose that It seam that after some press of the upper part of the phone, when the slide was open, it will separete from the rest of the phone !
A very very bad feeling for a phone that it cost more that 400€ !

Luca

Here is what I found to be bad in N85 after one month of use (migrated off the N95, also used N82, E90 recently).

1. Speakers inferior to those in N95 and N82. Please understand me right, N85's speakers are quite loud and clear for listening podcasts or when used as a speakerphone. Just don't try to play music through them. Compared to N95, you'll get no bass at all, and if your volume is more than 70% you'll get distortions. If you try to boost the bass in the equalizer, you'll simply get more distortions. I actually returned the first phone because of that issue just to discover that the second one sounded exactly the same. I guess this is because of a much smaller size of these speakers.

2. USB charging is great if it weren't so picky about the adapters. I bought two for the car and none works. Also, plugging it into the computer with no PC Suite installed always starts driver search, etc, etc.

3. OLED screen looks gorgeous indoor but try reading it outside on the sunny day. It's not just difficult, it is impossible.

4. Camera button is as bad as in E90. Impossible to half-press.

5. Slider. Very smooth to open the numeric keypad but very scratchy feel when opening the multimedia buttons.

6. Lack of the second processor to amend with video processing is clearly visible. Just point you camera in the image mode to something, focus and then pan from side to site. The image will flicker like crazy as the phone struggles to update it. On N95 and N82 you don't see that, it's all silky smooth. I'm yet to discover if this is the only manifestation of this but I'm afraid it is not. I don't play games so I can't comment on that.