N85 Gets Unboxed & Explored
Mark Guim over at The Nokia Blog has had his hands on Ricky’s treasured handset (yes, Ricky is jealous). He has been posting frequently about his experiences with the handset so far. First he unboxed it on a video with some intriguing music in the background, which you can watch by clicking on the post’s link.The N85 came with a free N-Gage game voucher, a choice between 8 music tracks or one album from the Music Store, 3 months of free voice navigation, an 8GB microSD memory card, a TV-Out cable as well as the usual Nokia slew of box accessories.
Mark then went on exploring his new N85 and pointed out that with the EuroAsia versions supporting the HSDPA 1900 band, the N85 is able to rock on 3G in the USA in AT&T’s 1900 coverage areas. Great news for all of you americans, since this means that you’re no longer bound to get the US-only version of a Nokia handset. What does this mean? Well, first you get a device that picks 3G in the USA and in Europe. Second, you don’t have to wait for Nokia to remember your handset and give it a firmware update! Isn’t that just awesome?
The last of his posts, so far, is the one regarding 2 tips for settings that you might want to explore on your FP2 devices (N78, N96, N79, N85, 6220 classic, 6210 Navigator and 5320 XpressMusic). The first one is the menu transition and animation effects, the second one is the access point prioritization. He also adds a 3rd N85-only setting to keep the date illuminated on the Power Saver. That’s a neat one!
[Picture courtesy of The Nokia Blog]
Hopefully I'm going there during this week to look at this beauty.
I wonder what kind of band the N85's over her are. That is if they support the asian HSDPA network.
Anyone that knows?
Unfortunately, I have to say that after 3 days of trying, I gave back my n85 and returned to the e51. This had several reasons:
- The overall build quality, compared to the e51, was worse than I expected. It just did not feel like an high-quality device with the wobbly slider and creaky plastics. The build quality was just ok, but I guess I have been spoiled by the e51. Typing was also much harder.
- Software speed and stability. FP1 on the e51 seems really mature. S60 there is speedy and almost never freezes, even if I have several applications opened at once. On the first day with the n85, I already had at least 5 or 6 freezes. And when I have several applications open, the phone is slow. For instance, it takes 2-4 seconds for the signals of the remote in the headphones to be translated into action.
But do not get me wrong, I think that the n85 might be a great phone for a lot of people. As I hardly ever use the camera (which of course is miles ahead of the e51) or ngage, I couldn't convince myself to spend 500€ on this toy. It had a lot of features I liked (FM transmitter, GPS and sportstracker, accelerometer) but overall it was not that much and still had too many flaws for me. So I guess I will have to wait a little while longer for a new Nokia phone.
Cheers,
Nemoi
http://tinyurl.com/N85-User-review-Amobil-no
(External link to Amobil.no translated from Norwegian to english)
Haven't had time to go to the city to look at the N85 yet as I'm reading for upcoming exams. (Besides having to work).
Hopefully the next deliverance of the N85 will have the slider fixed. (Read. N95 slider improved)