A call to reliability

It is never easy to have something new to say about the newest cellphone on the market.

Why?

Because the way I see it the gap between the kinds of cellphones that are being manufactured is becoming smaller and smaller. In a sense, cellphones are beginning to do the same things — perhaps a little faster, with more fancy colors, bigger megapixel camera or maybe bigger memory (cards or internal).

Whatever the changes may be, most of them seem cosmetic in nature. Eye candy is one term that doesn’t seem to want to die when describing a new cellphone. After all, many times it is the way things are packaged that wins the bucks for them — rather than what they can really do.

Japan is one country where it is the packaging that counts.

I should know, I just love looking at the packaging. When I make my trips to my favorite shops — candy stores, toy stores, gadget place and pet accessories shops — sometimes it is the way a product is packaged that wins the deal for me. In this sense, I am sure that I am like just any other shopper. There are times when I do take time to read the labels, but that is when I have lots of time to kill — or if the product I am buying costs a mint.

And then there is the Nokia N85.

This cellphone has been around since late last year but it continues to appeal to me. I have taken many trips to the gadget shops and one of the cellphones that I continue to hold is the Nokia N85.

Blame it on the straightforwardness of the cellphone’s design. It is black, has all the reliable features that the Nokia cellphones are known for — and in these times of simplifying our lives — it has become (at least for me) a symbol of what all cellphones should be — simple and points the user straight to the right functions.

I was told that the Nokia N85 is a newer version of the N81. But as I take a closer look at the phone, I also feel that this handset can be a good replacement for the Nokia N95 8G.

After all, it has almost all the same functions as the N95, but brought to a more high-tech level.

Let’s talk design

The Nokia N85 follows the style of N81, every corner and edge is rounded, with a black glossy plastic finish. This gives the hand a more comfortable, less edgy feel on the phone. The casing is made from glossy plastic, but it’s different from the one used in N96; it’s not as easily soiled and looks more expensive. The style is maintained with smooth buttons which have their markings automatically faded out in case a button is inactive in the current mode. The black N85 comes in two versions: one of them has the side edges and the back panel painted brown, the other uses violet.

The quality of materials is very high, the assembly quality is next to ideal. The right edge of the casing houses the two-position volume control button, the camera launch/shoot buttons as well as the keyboard block slider. It now functions slightly differently from what we had before: the slider automatically returns to its initial position, unblocking the phone if it was previously blocked, and blocking it if it had been unblocked.

The left edge hosts only a microSD slot protected with a flash. A variety of customization options, like sound trajectory and special effects, is available here. However, none of these tricks changes the sounding too much; the differences are minimal.

The upper edge has a microUSB slot, a power button and a standard 3.5-mm audio socket. 

What a sight

The screen of the N85 is identical in size to the original N95. I think the screen of the N85 gives the unit a better look than the Nokia N96, giving it a better looking palette. The only difference is that the dedicated buttons of N85 are totally flat and remain unseen until their markings are backlit in the active state.

The sensitive area of the wheel is limited to a thin limbo running along the perimeter of the navigation element. Moving your finger clockwise or counter-clockwise allows for quick playlist browsing in a corresponding direction. The light indicator sits right in the center of the Navi Wheel and can be easily turned off. 

Stay connected

The on-board Wi-Fi unit is served by a friendly WLAN Wizard that helps you configure a Web connection in no time. The USB 2.0 wire data transfer speed is around four megabytes per second. The Mass Storage mode is fully supported; the user is free to choose in what way the handset will be used upon establishing a phone-to-PC cable connection: Mass Storage, PC Suite, Image Print, Media player. As long as the phone stays connected to the PC, the battery is being recharged. The Home Media application allows interaction with other devices using the UnPNP protocol, which was given a broader functionality in the new models starting from Nokia N81.

Go ahead, rate it

I believe that the Nokia N85 is a fresh take on the all-in-one solution for a cellphone. It is a compact and elegantly built smartphone sporting a vast range of features. Sure, it does not have some fancy new name attached to it nor does it claim to have be the first in coming up with once-in-a-lifetime features but the Nokia N85 has everything that we have come to rely on in the Nokia cellphone — and reliability is hard to come by nowadays.

We see all sorts of ads for cellphones that claim they have the latest technology and can do the best in the fastest possible time. But for some of us that isn’t necessarily a biggie. We want to have a cellphone that we can trust to deliver at crunch time or whenever we need it to deliver. Never mind that it is not the most high-tech of gadgets on the market.

Right?

Maybe I am getting on in age, or maybe the fact that technology seems to move faster than the speed of light has gotten to me. Whatever, at this point in my life, I like a cellphone I can depend on.

The Nokia N85 fits the role, just perfectly.