Nokia's N85 is a slightly less well featured handset than the N96, though it does share some of the features of that handset. We'd go as far as to say it is an improvement on the N96 despite lacking some of that phone's capabilities.

The N85 is smaller than the N96, making it an easier handset to carry around. Both share a ‘dual slider' design, though. The traditional slider mechanism hides the number pad away till it is needed. But a second slide pops out of the top edge of the phone. This one offers four buttons with multiple functions. What you can do with each one depends on the software you are using at the time, and available functions are indicated by a white backlight.

When you are in music mode they are music controls, when you are playing games they offer some gaming controls and when you are Web browsing they can be used for zooming. There's no accelerometer, but using the top slider gets you in and out of wide screen mode too.

The screen is a winner. It isn't huge at 2.6 inches across diagonal corners, but it uses OLED technology which makes it sharp and bright indoors, though less wonderful outside. Visually it comes into its own with things like video playback and gaming. And the handset is an N-Gage phone so there are plenty of gaming opportunities to be had. The screen also helps with battery life conservation and we found we could manage a couple of days between charges.

Music playback is a key feature of this phone. It comes with an 8GB microSD card and it has a 3.5mm headset slot. Stereo speakers sit along one of the long edges, and sound output quality is good both through the provided headset and those speakers.

The handset includes an FM transmitter, quite a rarity on mobile phones and a feature that lets you send tracks to any FM radio; for example in your car or in a friend's home. The sound features are rounded out with an FM radio.

The N85 has Wi-Fi and GPS built in and it is an HSDPA handset. There is a front-facing camera for two-way video calling and a 5-megapixel main camera which benefits from a manual cover that helps protect the lens when it is not in use. Sliding the cover away from the lens brings the camera software into play. The Carl Zeiss optics help with image quality and the dual LED flash means indoor shots are reasonable if you are close up.

Verdict
If we were weighing up between the N96 and N85 then we'd probably opt for this handset, which has a better build quality and is that little bit smaller for the pocket and hand.

Company: Nokia

Contact: 0800 331 6021

Tags: nokia microsd handset fm broadcasting wi-fi tessar high-speed downlink packet access bluetooth