It’s been a week since I started using the Nokia N85 and in that time, I’ve found a lot to like and some things that left me wanting more. This last part of my series on the Nokia N85 will focus on:

• Built in applications
• Week wrap up

Although the Nokia N85 is called a smartphone, it doesn’t quite feel as like one to me. I know it has WiFi, a GPS and a camera. But one of my personal requirements for a smartphone is an easy input mechanism. The N85 does not have a touch screen or a keyboard, so that makes things a bit difficult for entering appointments, addresses, etc.

Let’s look at some of the other applications included on this phone…

GPS

The N85 has a built in GPS receiver, that requires a view of the sky to get a fix on the satellites. This phone also includes an application called Maps. Turn by turn voice guided directions requires paying a subscription fee, but you get a 3 month free trial to test it.

When you start the Maps application, you are presented with a globe that you can roll and zoom. I was using AT&T on Edge and it was a bit slow updating. Then at one point, it got stuck and wouldn’t zoom in or out.

By pressing the Left soft key (Options), you can search on popular destinations like gas stations, rest areas, etc and get driving or walking directions to their location.

Of course you can also enter your own addresses to navigate to, or navigate to the address for one of your contacts. The turn by turn spoken directions are handy, but street names aren’t spoken. The male voice just speaks the direction to turn, not the road name.

I found the GPS to work really well, but since it can be difficult to see the display in sunlight, it can be hard to see the GPS info on the screen.

Misc. Applications

Some of the other included applications are an Adobe PDF viewer, unit converter, Zip compressor, Quickoffice and a notes app.

The Adobe Reader application doesn’t work very well on the N85. One of the more obvious reasons is that this phone has a small display, so you have to scroll around a lot to see all the document. But the other reason is that it just doesn’t work worth a hooey. I tried several simple PDFs and you can see the results in these screen shots… Notice the large blocky Black sections? That’s not in the PDF file…

When I was able to get a PDF to load correctly, the resulting image quality was jaggy. Not good.

The unit converter isn’t anything super special, but little apps like this always come in handy from time to time.

The QuickOffice suite will allow you to load Excel, Word and Powerpoint files for viewing on the N85. If you want edit or create capability, you have to pay for a license…

I didn’t have any issues with viewing Excel or Word files, but I didn’t have much luck with powerpoint files… Again, a phone with a screen of this size, really does not lend itself well to working with documents.

Wrap Up

As usual, a week of using one phone ends with me ready to try something new. I’m just never happy… what’s up with that? The Nokia N85 does have a lot going for it. I really like the size. It’s almost perfect in that respect. The 5MP camera which takes very nice macro shots is a real plus too. I can’t fault the GPS or Wifi either for that matter. But when all is said and done, it comes down to the lack of a real keyboard. That tends to be a real deal breaker for me. If I didn’t text as much as I do, the keyboard  probably would not matter to me, but I do, so it does. So there you go… Even though the Nokia N85 isn’t going to work out for me personally, I still highly recommend it as a great little full featured phone.

Filed in categories: Wireless

Tagged: N85, Nokia, S60, Smartphone, Symbian, Symbian OS Related

A Week with the Nokia N85 Smartphone – Day 6 & 7 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 12, 2009 at 4:52 am.

This part of my series on the Nokia N85 will focus on:

• The camera
• Capturing video
• Listening to audio
• Playing games

Camera

The N85 has a 5 megapixel digital camera with a Carl Zeiss auto focus lens and an LED flash. To use the camera, you slide open the lens cover over the lens. You can launch the camera application, but without opening the lens cover, you’ll be unable to capture images. I learned this the hard way duh…

Opening the lens cover will unlock the phone and allow you to take pictures right away. The on-screen icons should be familiar if you’ve ever used a digital camera.

There are even several scene modes that you can use if desired.

Captured photos can be saved in albums, tagged with GPS coordinates and played as a slide show.

Images can also be emailed and individual photo details can be edited.

Here are a couple example pictures. The camera does a pretty good job. I was happy with the macro capabilities. There are two things that do annoy me about the camera though. The main thing is that it is very hard to see the display (viewfinder) outdoors in sunlight. This makes it really difficult to take pictures and videos when you can’t see what you’re trying to capture.

The other problem with the camera is the shutter button on the Right side. It is very mushy feeling and kind of hard to press. You have to press the button halfway to auto focus and then all the way to capture the picture.

Video

In addition to capturing still images, you can also use the N85 to take videos.

Like the still image display, the video display shows you the necessary information.

There is even a night shooting mode.

And White balance settings.

Capturing video suffers from the same problems that I encountered while capturing still images. Hard to see viewfinder outdoors and mushy capture button. The capture button isn’t as big a deal though as you just have to press it once to toggle the  start and stop of video recording.

The main camera on the back can capture 640 x 480 resolution, MPEG-4 video and the camera on the front records at 176 x 144 resolution using the H.263 codec.

Main camera video sample (.MP4, 11mb)

Not bad video for a cell phone.

Front camera video sample (.3GP, 96kb)

Typical grainy low resolution video.

You can watch videos on the phone and find other videos to watch too.

Music

The N85 has a nice set of audio programs too.

There’s a digital music player for your .MP3 files, a Podcast player, FM and Internet radio players and even a nifty built in FM transmitter.

Music can be copied to the microSD card and organized into folders for artists and albums. Music sounds pretty good through this phone and I like that it has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack.

It’s also cool that you can turn the N85 into a music player by sliding the display down (to the Right while in landscape mode) to reveal special music control keys.

If you enjoy listening to FM radio, you can do that too. You have to plug in a set of earbuds or headphones though in order to tune stations though. It uses the headphone / earbud wire as an antenna.

If you are more inclined to listen to streaming Internet radio stations, you’re in luck. There’s an app for that too. It can stream using your phone’s data connection, or via WiFi. There is a station directory based on genre, or you can add your own station address manually.

Games

This little phone can play games too.

There is a large selection of trial games that you can install either on the device itself, or on the microSD card.

The games are pretty fun and are great for wasting time while waiting in a checkout line. I tried several, including the oldie but goodie – Tetris.

The Nokia N85 makes a great little media device with its built-camera, camcorder, music player, FM radio, streaming internet radio player and games. You definitely won’t be bored with this phone. My only complaint is with the shutter button and even that isn’t a major complaint

The next part of my series on the Nokia N85 will focus on:

• Built in applications
• Wrap up

Filed in categories: Wireless

Tagged: N85, Nokia, S60, Symbian

A Week with the Nokia N85 Smartphone – Day 3, 4 & 5 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 9, 2009 at 1:00 am.

The Android G1 was a cool phone, but you and I both knew that I wouldn’t stick with it very long. What can I say, I get bored easily. So, this week I’m going to be trying out the Nokia N85 smartphone. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a newer Symbian phone, so I’m excited to see if it will keep me interested enough to stick around after the week is done. 

Day 0

This first post, otherwise known as Day 0, will provide a short tour of the physical features of this phone. The rest of the series will delve into more detailed usage of the these features.

Hardware Specifications

OS: Symbian 9.3 S60
Bands: Quad-band EGSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, WCDMA 850/1900/2100 MHz
Data: GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA/WiFi
Memory: 74 MB internal, 8GB microSD flash card included
Display: 2.6″ 16 million color QVGA Active Matrix OLED, 240×320 pixel resolution
Camera: 5 megapixel  (2584 x 1938 pixels) with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus and dual-LED flash
Video: 640×480 VGA, up to 30 frames per second
Bluetooth: 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate and A2DP
WiFi: 802.11b, 802.11g
Audio: 3.5mm stereo headphone jack
Battery: 1200mHa, Estimated 4 hours talk time, estimated 12.5 days standby time
Size: 4.o5 x 1.97 x 0.63 inches (103 x 50 x 16 mm)
Weight: 4.5oz (128g)

Package Contents

Nokia N85 Smartphone
Battery
AC Adapter
micro USB cable
Video connectivity cable
3.5mm earphones and controller
Getting started guides

Out of the box, I was impressed by the size of the N85. It’s very close to the same dimensions as the Palm Centro as you can see from the image below.

For me, this size is pretty much perfect because it is comfortable in both your hand and your pocket.

The N85 has a shiny Black plastic face that attracts fingerprints and smudges like flowers attract bees. The non-touchscreen display takes up most of the front surface of the phone. Above the display is the speaker, light sensor and a front facing secondary camera.

Below the display is a collection of 9 buttons. The buttons that you can actually see include Call and End keys, the Navi wheel / scroll key with the center select button and to the Right of that is the small multimedia key.

The four buttons that you don’t see when the phone is in idle mode are the two buttons that map to the bottom screen menu items, as well as the Menu key and Clear key C which are located along the bottom edge. To activate these buttons, you just press the case in that area.

On the back side of the phone, you will find the easy to remove battery cover, the camera lens and LED flash.

There’s a protective slide cover for the camera lens. Sliding this cover open exposes the lens and also launches the camera application.

I really like the fact that sliding the cover open will immediately start the camera application and will allow you to capture images straight away without having to navigate various menus in order to launch the camera application.

On the Left edge of the phone, you will find the microSD card slot and lanyard attachment point.

On the opposite edge, you will find two speakers for stereo sound with 3D effects. There is also a camera shutter button, key lock switch and the volume / zoom button.

The top edge has the micro USB connector for charging and syncing. Next to it is a 3.5mm stereo earphone jack and the power button.

To access the numeric keypad, you slide the display upwards. The sliding mechanism feels like it has a spring assist, which makes it pretty easy to slide it open and closed.

The only issue I have with this design is that to slide the display up, you have to use your thumb on the screen to move it. That means smeary fingerprints all over the screen.

Sliding open the screen will ‘wake’ up the phone if it is in idle mode and will not require that you press the screen unlock buttons.

It’s important to note that the keypad does not have individual keys. Instead, it has one flat surface with the buttons under it. It has good tactile feedback and is backlit, but I personally prefer separate keys. That’s just me though…

The numeric keypad isn’t the only keypad on this phone. If you slide the screen in the opposite direction, it will expose four short side keys.

These keys have different functions depending on the application that you’re in. In the image above, you can see that the keys have play/pause, stop, next and previous track functions for the music player. When using the web browser, they can be used to zoom in and out as well as to play/pause and stop music that you may be listening to in the background. They can also be used in game mode.

So far I’m loving the size of this phone. It’s perfect for sliding in my pocket when I take walks at work. The phone is solid, has a good heft to it and feels good in my hand. It does exhibit some creaking noises when I apply my ever popular gadgeteer squeeze test on it.

My main complaint so far is the flat keyboard. I’ve never been a fan of that style and am not sure this phone will be the one that changes my mind.

That’s it for the hardware tour. I’ll be back with my Day 1 and 2 impressions, which will include:

• First impressions of the user interface
• Making and receiving calls
• Browsing the web

Filed in categories: Wireless

Tagged: N85, Nokia, Smartphone, Symbian

A Week with the Nokia N85 Smartphone originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 23, 2009 at 1:00 am.