Announcement of Nokia N79 and Nokia N85. First ImpressionsIn a cloudy rainy August 26, 2008 Nokia announced two new smartphones the N85 and the N79 and at the same time lifted the veil over the future of N-Series and mobile games N-Gage.About the place To hold the presentation in Moscow the company has chosen a very interesting place, which great number of Moscovites goes past many times. In five minutes of walk from Taganskaya metro station you can find a narrow street in the middle of which you can see a strange iron gate with a large painted Red Army star. The gate hides some annex to the common two-storied building. This annex has a net shed which is associated with a summer café.  Though after you entered the gate, the analogy with the resting place quickly disappears, as the inner environment resembles by its style the defence plant and army headquarters. By the way, this place is open nowadays to the visitors, which have an opportunity to make a good excursion, which we describe later. The latter is likely more interesting than a new film or an exhibition of modern painters.    But we have drawn away from the theme of description. So let’s go back to the entrance of the building. The narrow high-ceilinged halls inherent to the soviet times move to a stair landing. Near it you can find a lift and fall into recollection of the five-storied houses built of the Khrushchev era. The narrow ramshackle stairway with a fifty-year-old layer of plaster leads us not upstairs as usual, but downstairs. But for the peculiarities of the underground architecture the way to the each flour takes much more time than in this building thanks to its three storeys. When walking downstairs, besides the uncommon signs of the storeys from 1 to -18 you meet nice humour, which inspires you to slow down. The last flour is placed about 53 meters below the ground surface, exactly near the metro ring, which carriages can be heard though the damp walls of the bunker.    The further scheme of the autonomous communication center can be scrutinize on the building model, which is placed in one of the halls. Fortunately or maybe unfortunately, the most parts of the underground building are restored. And it is only the wet ground with a characteristic soil smell that makes you feel inner necessary discomfort producing an impression of something solid.         So let’s move from this brief description, which doesn’t abound in details, to the reasons that urged the company on choosing this place, but not the common exhibition halls or other comfort places. As to Nokia, the whole environment and atmosphere of the demonstration was openly taken from the films abound the agent 007 and one of these films appears soon in the cinemas with a traditional product placement of Sony Ericsson. While the community is waiting for this film, Nokia told the journalists the opposite story, in which you don’t need to look the film, as the real life turns out to be like a film and all people are actors. It is funny, but then you understand why they’ve chosen this bunker and allowed the people to walk freely in the most parts of the territory. From words to deeds Nokia Nseries devices, which are named in the advertising leaflets as the multimedia computers, have become one of the most priority solutions of the Finnish vendor for the three years passed since the first N90 due to the functional equipment and the buyers, which take a liking to this brand name written on the handsets. In the beginning of 2006 there were only a few smartphones of the company, but nowadays you easier imagine Nseries without Nokia, than vice versa. Now more than 20% of all company handsets have a name consisting of a desired N letter and two numbers, but not the four-number name. Moreover, today the subbrand Nseries is as popular as Nokia, thus it is time to broaden the portfolio of the product line, not only with the ultimatum solutions, but also with the mass products. The latter showed their success by example of the very successful handsets N73, N82, N95 that reached their sales peak in 6 months since the start of the sales. It is this niche of €300-600, where the company placed not only these announced new devices, but the most solutions, which are to appear in 2008 and have N index. The second theme of the presentation was N-Gage platform, which will be a necessary part of the new level of the interactive entertainments. Over the last months since the service was launched, the company has revised not only the specific of positioning and bounds with other devices, but also the idea of providing the targeted user with games. Since N82 and N79 the most smartphones from Nseries have more than 400MB of the memory card occupied with the games distributives. The user also can find in the box together with the pile of manuals and disks a voucher allowing to activate one of the games, which he/she likes. Moreover, besides the two dozens of announced titles, the company plans to increase the range of games up to 50 till the spring of 2009. Here we should mention the coordination of Nokia with EA, Atari, Ubisoft, Vivedi, Konami, Sony, with the companies which names are familiar to every gamer.   We are sure to tell you about Nseries conception in the next reviews of these novelties, while the article about games appears within the next few days. Now we prepared for you the sort description of two new announced phones, which come into the market in the middle/end of October this year. Nokia N79 To replace Nokia N73, which stayed too long in the market, the company offers not the N82 and not even the N78, but this smartphone on the base of S60 3Ed Fp2, which has the same hardware characteristics as the N78. The only difference is the keypad and the 5megapixel camera equipped with a LED flashlight.     Unlike the inexpensive 6220 Classic the N79 has a Wi-Fi-module, as well as the glossy casing. Moreover, the same as in the Supernova series, the company has returned Xpress ON – that is three panels, which can be found in the sales pack. Consequently, if there will be 2 colour solutions in the market, a user will choose among 6 colour variants of the rear cover, while the kindred N78 has only one white colour scheme, which can be viewed as the alternative to the base variant. As to the camera, it is the totally the same as the one installed in the N95 with 8GB of memory. The new solution comes into the market in October, though we can assume, that will be some delays and limited amount of the device available only in Nokia Stores. As to the price, it is likely to be the same as the current price of the N82, because the disparity is kept only in the bounds of Nseries, which price restraints are N78 and N85.      After one hour work with the smartphone, the memory kept mostly the pleasant impressions, which are slightly spoiled by the ergonomics of the dense navi pad. As to the rest, it is an interesting specimen of Nokia multimedia series in a solidly built casing, which has minimum of sharp corners and borders. The tactile feedback resembles the one from the old Nokia 6233, which is, unfortunately, the maximum level of the quality to the present generation of the N-series smartphones. It is wrong to predict an enormous success to the N78, as its sales are likely to be a bit higher than the N78 due to the market which is full of the new N82.     Nokia N85 Everyone waited for this smartphone, made interesting suppositions, looked for something special, but the dreams faded after the first moment you take it in the hands. The company positions this new device, as the substitution to the original N95, which has still been controlling the niche of $600-700 phones. Above it there is 8Gb version of the N95, which will be replaced after numerous delays with the experimental N96. As to the N85, its some peculiarities was known in June in this summer, while the main peculiarity, namely the 2.6” OLED screen was veiled up to 25 August. We’d like to note, that the current firmware dated August 22, 2008 makes the screen a bit brighter than in the N82. Consequently, the users don’t have negative reaction as with the 7900 and the 8800 Arte. The other features are the standard functionality in a manner of the N79 with the same camera, the user program shell of S60 3Ed Fp2, which becomes notably better, remade drivers and codecs. The reason of these changes is likely the utilization in the smartphone the hardware components of ST Micro electronics. It is indirectly confirmed by the announced characteristics of the 1200mAh BL-5K battery, which are follows:
Theoretically the results are very good, but in fact you have to reduce this performance on 10-30% depending on the changes you have to make in the parameters, which are unhandy in the everyday work, when they are minimal.       The other interesting features are a 5 megapixel camera equipped with two powerful LEDs which work as the flashlights. The picture quality of the stills made indoors is a bit better than those made with the N95. But when outdoors, it was uncomfortable to test the camera, but we will discuss this moment in the next review of the phone. The sound quality in the headphones is on the same level with the 6210 Navigator, which means that it is worse than the N78 and the N81.
Nokia N85 photo samples:    The N85 has much common with the N81, as both handsets are positioned as the youth game devices with a good multimedia potential. But considering the current system of positioning Nokia N85, it also doubles as the successor to the N95 due to the announced €450 price tag, two-sided slider mechanism and screen diagonal. We’d like to note that the smartphone will have the lower sales as the N95, simply because it lacks the tag of the expensive device. And even the 5 megapixel camera is not a big deal nowadays. All in all, it is rather a solution to enlarge the range, though it is likely to have higher sales than the last year’s N81 and to attract some buyers, who intended to purchase N96 this autumn. Nokia N85 is to appear in the market in October this year. The company should in time remove theN95-2 from the windows, otherwise this very important for Nokia model won’t be sold in the planned volume.   Our own impressions from the N85 are far from those, that many people would like to have, but nevertheless they are expected. The handset lies in the hand in the same way as the N81, but the slider mechanism is a bit nicer, the halves are moved with little effort. As to the keys, there are blocking slider on the right side, the tough dedicated camera key with a long travel distance of the shutter release, diverse flat navigational pad and a number keypad with an average ergonomics. The buttons are again very dense. After the N85 the N81 turns to be the handiest device in terms of navigation, as in the N85 the solid panel is pressed with the notable effort and you have to aim well at the buttons in order to distinguish call send key and menu key. But all in all, the things are not so bad, and especially for those, who are not used to the quick navigation in games and menu. And it is another controversy of this phone, as it is positioned as the perfect device for the Ngage.   The other ideas about the N85 can’t be truly formed after only two hours in use. But we can promise our readers that our next review of the phone will cover all numerous peculiarities of this phone, which are worth careful scrutinizing. © Written by Tikhonov Valeriy, Mobiset.ru Translated by Arina Urban. Published — 29 August 2008. |
 |
