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By Damian Koh
Oct 30, 2008

If there is one thing Nokia has gotten right with the N85, it would be the look and feel of this Nseries handset. But let's face it. The first N95 made an impact on the expectations of what high-end phones should have and, typical of the Nseries range, the current N85 is chock full with connectivity features. While the design front has seen little change, it has gotten better with each revision.

Design

If you've held the N95, N95 (8GB) or N96 previously, you'd notice the N85 (103 x 50 x 16mm; 128g) has a significantly smaller footprint in the hand. The curved edges help to accentuate that impression, too. There's a 2.6-inch QVGA screen, with the key difference being an OLED panel. OLED displays, which have better screen legibility while consuming less power, have been used before on Nokia's S40 models. So it's good that the company is now implementing this in the higher-end Nseries, too.

Text is crisp, colors are juicy and the display is brilliant. If anything, it felt like we were looking through a glass pane and we didn't even notice the fingerprint smudges until the display went into power-saver mode. The light sensor that is beside the front-facing camera also did a great job in adjusting the brightness to suit the ambient light. 

The micro-USB port, 3.5mm audio jack and power button on the N85 are along the top edge. Note that the N85 doesn't have a 2mm charging port like previous models. Instead, it uses the micro-USB head for both charging (with separate adapter) and syncing with the PC. On the right, you'll find the volume control, a dedicated keylock button and a pair of speakers flanking both ends. We did find the camera shutter a little too spongy. It would have been better if there was a distinct feel between half-pressing and depressing the button all the way.



Most sliders with a numeric keypad suffer from the same problem. The top row keys are usually too close to the edge of the slider. It's the same with the N85, although it wasn't as bad as we thought in actual use. In close slider mode, the button symbols on the control panel disappear giving the impression that the N85 has touch-sensitive keys when they are, in fact, conventional buttons. 

Our nitpicks are with the controls on the navigation which were a notch too stiff, and when we slid open the phone to reveal the multimedia keys, we had to force the action a little, rather than simply nudging it. The multimedia keys, as we've seen before on other Nokia dual-sliders morphs to the relevant controls when listening to music or playing a game.

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