Nokia N85

The Nokia N85, one of the latest premium devices in Nokia’s N-series, is an unlocked phone with an OLED display that will run on AT&T’s 3G network as well as T-Mobile’s slower EDGE network. Since it’s unlocked, you don’t have to sign a contract with a carrier to own it, but that means it’s going to cost you more than a subsidized handset would. For a pricey $492, you’ll enjoy a 5-megapixel camera with flash, 8GB of storage, a good Web browser, solid music and video playback, and exceptional gaming all in the palm of your hand. However, the call quality on this device and battery life were disappointing.

Design

The most striking feature about the N85 is its large and absolutely stunning 320 x 240-pixel, 2.6-inch organic light emitting diode (OLED) display. While most phones’ LED displays offer between 65,000 and 262,000 colors, the N85’s OLED palette offers 16.7 million colors, which makes images and icons pop beautifully.

The N85 has a black gloss face with the same silver 5-way directional pad found on other N-series devices. The Send/End keys look chintzy and felt a bit stiff to us, as did the lower left menu key.

Slide the front of the device up to access a somewhat cramped alphanumeric keyboard; after a day of use, we were typing comfortably on it. Slide the phone’s display downward, and the screen will switch into landscape mode and four buttons appear out of the top of the device; these are the Play/Pause and Skip keys for video files. When you’re playing games, they can also serve as control keys.

We love the 3.5mm headphone jack that’s placed directly next to a mini-USB charging port on the top of the phone. The back of the device has a copper gloss coloring as well as a 5-MP camera and dual-LED flash.

User Interface

The N85 sports the Symbian S60 Version 3 Feature Pack 2 operating system. The new feature pack makes it easier to switch between applications using the active applications toolbar, and the home screen can be customized to display six of your most used applications. Below these icons is a search box, a calendar, any notification of paused or playing media, and a wireless status indicator. There’s even the option to share your images or view comments on social networks such as Flickr, Ovi, and Vox directly from the home screen, but you can’t add additional networks like Facebook or MySpace. 

When you click the device’s Menu option you’re presented with a standard home screen offering that provides shortcuts to Contacts, your music, Photos, the Web, and more. We noticed that the device was zippy while we moved through menus, but within applications such as the photo gallery, it felt sluggish.