Nokia N86 8MP

The name of the Nokia N86 8MP kind of gives away the main innovation that Nokia have implemented with this handset. Recently announced at the Mobile World Congress, the Nokia N86 8MP has garnered a great deal of press attention due to some slick marketing by Nokia. Whether this is deflect criticism from a handset that is basically an N85 with bells on is anybody’s guess. Perhaps we are being a tad harsh on Nokia here as the N86 does have some novel technical ideas that put it into direct competition with the upcoming Samsung Tocco Ultra and, to an extent, the Samsung Omnia HD.

For starters there are some minor cosmetic differences there are between the N86 8MP and the N85. The keypad has far more defined buttons and the soft keys are arranged slightly differently. Including one key that is at a completely different angle to the others, which is a handy touch as pressing the key with your thumb seems a tad easier and quicker. Even if it does look odd. Like the N96 and N85 before it, the N86 8MP is a dual slider handset. This means when you slide the phone downwards the media control keys are displayed and to display the keypad you simply slide the phone up. The mechanism itself feels comfortable and not too loose. In fact the whole handset feels a bit on the chunky side, at 149 grams it comes in heavier than the N96.

As you would expect the N86 8MP is a HSDPA compatible handset with quad band and even WiFi with GPS navigation. This is becoming a much more ever present feature on high end handsets and Nokia have even included Nokia maps with a built in digital compass. Obviously this would only ever be useful if you were stuck on the island in ‘Lost’ but it is a novel feature that adds to the phone nonetheless.

The real meat of the N86 8MP is obviously the camera and Nokia have gone the whole hog to wring as much power as possible from the 8 megapixel engine. A lot of this is to do with the Carl Zeiss lens which rivals some point and shoot standard digital cameras. The N86 8MP is the first mobile phone to offer variable aperture values (which without getting too technical and boring, will offer overall sharper images) so even the toughest lighting conditions should not pose the N86 any problems

So in conclusion the N86 8MP looks to be an evolution of previous handset designs, rather than the radical redesigns we’ve seen from the Tocco Ultra and the Sony Ericsson Idou. This is not necessarily a bad thing though. The N86 8MP has stuck to a very successful formula which should ensure that it will capture a place in peoples harts. The problem it faces is that there are a lot of upcoming phones that do exactly the same thing and in some cases they do it better, so the handset lacks a unique selling point. The Omnia HD has high definition video record capabilities and it will probably be around the same price as the N86. Time will decide the victor of this particular battle.