Nokia N86

Design
Nokia’s N86 has a slider
format, and a matte black
exterior. There is a 2.6 ’
AMOLED 16 million colour
screen, the colours and
images come off as average
and aren ’t particularly
vibrant. There vanity camera
is located above the screen.
The slider has a very good
built, and has that little
tactile bump when we slid
opened the keyboard.
Moving on to the frontal
keypad, the keys are thin
and pill-shaped. There are
two shortcut keys to pre-
defined routes. Then to the
sides flanking the d-pad are
the call/end call buttons. The
menu button is located at
the 45 degree angle on the
bottom left, and on the right
is the cancel button. The
central d-pad serves as the
main navigator and confirms
your selection.
Slide the front screen
upwards, and you ’ll see the
tried and true alphanumeric
keypad beneath it. The
alphanumeric keys were
designed with extra room
between the keys, and T9
lovers should have no
problems with the keys. The
multimedia keys were also
exposed when sliding the
screen downwards, where
we ’ll explain a bit more at
the music section.
The top of the Nokia N86 has
the power button, the
3.5mm jack and the
microUSB port. The left spine
of the phone has the lock/
unlock toggle key. On the
right, the volume toggle and
quick camera button is
located here. Lastly, the back
of the phone has the 8 MP
camera and the kickstand is
also located here.
Open the back cover and
you ’ll the see microSD slot,
which is hot-swappable. The
battery pack secures the SIM
card in place.
Feature
The Symbian OS v9.3 S60 rel.
3.2 feature pack 2, powers
the N86, the UI is pretty
straightforward. There home
screen has top shortcut keys,
which can be tweaked to
provide your favourite
shortcuts. There are three
horizontal tabs can be
tweaked as well. Head into
the main menu, the simple
3x4 grid layout is the first
thing you’ll see. The S60
looks tidy and all the apps
are packed in the main icons.
Email, text and multimedia
options are all here, no push
mail options however. PIM
wise there is a document
viewer, calculator, converter,
ZIP and Adobe PDF reader.
There is also a voice
recorder.
The Nokia N86 8MP uses an
ARM 11 434 MHz CPU, and
that did equal some pretty
decent speeds from the
phone. There ’s also 8 GB
internal memory with 128
MB RAM, and the microSD slot
supports up to 16GB.
The N86’s Symbian web
browser doesn’t have many
frills, it will fit text into a
screen. And with the
accelerometer, the N86
supports landscape mode.
However, surfing in
landscape is slightly tedious.
The N86’s vertical keypad
means you have to
straighten the phone before
we could type in a new URL.
In the App section, there is
also a Youtube and Facebook
portal.
The phone has a dedicated
Ovi Store portal. The premise
is simple, much like Apple ’s
app store. It has a good
amount of apps, which
should please app fanatics.
The N86 has the N-Gage
portal, and there quite a
number of trial games
available. like the Ovi Store,
the N-Gage sells dedicated
games for your N86.
Onboard GPS is available in
the N86, and is powered by
Nokia Maps 3.0. Ovi Maps
offers four different view
modes including satellite
and hybrid maps.
Multimedia
The Nokia N86 has the S60
music player, as usual, your
music library is automatically
sorted by artist, album, genre
and composer and searching
tracks is available. You can
also create your own
playlists. Adding music is
noticeably simpler in the
N86- the phone
automatically refreshes your
music list the instant the
microSD is slot inside.
Choosing the refresh option
will also add tracks into the
library.
The dedicated multimedia
keys made playing our video
and audio files much easier.
And there are buttons to
play/pause, stop, forward
and rewind.
The S60 audio quality is
good and but not
exceptional, at lower
volumes the speakers
perform well but once we
turn in up the volume tends
to shake up the entire
handset. Guess we can’t have
everything, and a loud
volume point does not mean
lower quality music.
The Nokia N86 features Real
player for playing your video
clips. The video player can
be displayed in both normal
and fullscreen modes. When
in full screen, the softkey
functions are hidden so that
they don't spoil the viewing
experience and only pop up
when a key is pressed. The
FM radio on Nokia 5800 has a
nice simple interface and
can automatically scan and
save the available stations in
your area. RDS support is
included and the Visual radio
is also on-board.
Connectivity
The Nokia N86 has a great
selection of connectivity,
with quad-band
functionality
(850 /900 /1800 /1900 MHz)
with 3.6Mbps HSDPA, EDGE,
GPRS, and Bluetooth 2.0 with
A2DP. There is also Wi-Fi.
Camera
The
Nokia
N86 is
powered
by an 8
megapixel, 3264x2448
pixels, wide 28mm Carl Zeiss
lens, autofocus, dual LED
flash. The picture quality is
surprisingly average
however, as photos come
out slightly blurry and the
colours feel a little unnatural
at times. We also noticed
some white outs when
shooting out in the sun.
The wide angel lens does
means the N86 can
physically capture more of
the background. But, we do
have a little qualm with the
macro shots as an object has
trouble being focused.
Another qualm is the lack of
a quick camera key or the
ability to access the camera
from inside the phone. The
only way to turn on the
camera is to slide open the
protective cover from the
back.
The kickstand will
automatically bring up the
gallery by default, and
pictures can be viewed in
both portrait and landscape
mode. It will also zoom up to
400%. There is also video
recording running at 30fps.
There ’s a vanity camera
throw in there for 3G calls.
Verdict
The Nokia N86 in the end
gave us mixed feelings
about its main hardware
upgrade – the camera. The
phone carries a heavyweight
camera but the picture
quality could be better. In
the multimedia area
however, the N86 does not
falter. Combined with the
connectivity options, and N-
gage, this phone should
keep even the neediest of us
entertained.
Ultimately, the Nokia N86
falls back as a multimedia
device for us rather than a
camera centric-phone. At RM
1,880.00 this puts the phone
at mid-range pricing. The
N86 is recommended for
those who love a slider form
factor with great multimedia
options, and the ability to
snap pictures.