A compact phone; it has a glossy finish with a line pattern drawn on the rear. It feels very solid in hand and is built well even though this phone doesn’t share the steel body inserts that the likes of the E75 and E71 do. The camera has a dual- LED flash and a lens cover; the latter being a rarity these days. The AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic LED) screen  is not as clear as the excellent TFT LCD screens on the N95 8 GB and N96; it also looks darker in comparison and this has nothing to do with the brightness settings. We were surprised since this should not be the case in theory but the display is not as good as some of the other Nokia phones. That being said there’s nothing wrong with its crispness and the colours are beautiful. The menu buttons are built into the front panel and the backlight is the only way to notice them. The call buttons are two slashes built into the front and while they’re suitably raised from the bezel it’s still not as intuitive or comfortable to use as larger buttons would be. All the buttons are hard to press and this is slightly annoying,  articularly the left/right menu buttons and the main menu and delete buttons. 

Backlighting on the keys is really good however. The slider mechanism is positive and snappy — better than the slide on the Nokia N95. It’s a twoway slider and the other side has backlit multimedia keys.  The number keypad is well laid out and reasonably well spaced although the keys are flat and this takes getting used to. However key feedback is good and the keys themselves are well designed so fast SMSing is possible. The hold key on the side is very usefulto prevent accidental activation of anything while the device is in your pocket. A 3.5-mm jack is useful and well located on the top of the phone. Nokia has moved to a micro USB data port; we liked the mini USB port it left behind. It has a 1200 mAh battery, decent enough, and the phone is really slim in spite of the large battery. The N85 has an FM transmitter that works up to a range of three metres and allows you to broadcast music on your phone to nearby FM radios.

This includes Hi-Fi decks, other cellphones with FM radio and  even car decks. The menu intuitiveness is a little better than the E71 and E75, clearly Nokia’s 6 series have menus better suited to multimedia use.
 

View Nokia N85 Video Below

The phone itself has very good call clarity although its not the best around. Audio quality during music playback is really good and this phone doubles as a capable MP3 player; you can use your own headphones thanks to a standard 3.5-mm jack. The camera gives really good results after a little tinkering around. The Bluetooth transfer speed is the best in the business. We’d like a larger screen before we justify the price – at Rs. 25,939, it’s a really good, feature-rich phone, but the N95 8 GB has a larger screen and would be a better choice.

A compact phone; it has a glossy finish with a line pattern drawn on the rear. It feels very solid in hand and is built well even though this phone doesn’t share the steel body inserts...