Latest Mobile Phone Full Specification: Nokia 8MP Review

Multimedia
Let us start with the main feature of the phone. The Nokia N86 is the first phone from Nokia to have an 8 megapixels camera on-board. Not only does it have an 8 MP sensor but it also comes with a 28mm wide angle Carl Zeiss lens, variable aperture and high speed shutter. The wide angle lens enables you to see more of the subject compared to a standard 35mm lens camera without having to back up. The variable aperture means the camera automatically adjusts the amount of light entering the camera, which means the N86 camera adjusts better to overly bright or dark conditions compared to other camera phones.
The camera lens is protected by a sliding lens cover. It automatically starts/stops the camera when slid open/close. Above the lens is the dual LED flash. The dual LEDs are said to be just as bright as xenon flash at close range (however xenons are unbeatable at long range). They can also be used during a video recording to illuminate the scene. The flash also has a small red light that alerts the subjects that they are being photographed.

The camera software on the N86 is one of the best. However, when seen in light of some of the newer Samsung phones, it lacks some features such as face detection, smile detection, blink detection, etc. But apart from that the S60 camera application is fully loaded with Geo tagging, exposure adjustment, ISO adjustment, color modes, Red-Eye reduction, white balance, sharpness, contrast,self timer, panorama mode and self timer. The phone can also take pictures at various intervals automatically.

he camera app starts in two seconds flat after you slide down the lens cover. After that, from pressing the shutter key, focusing on the subject, capturing the picture and then getting ready to take a new picture (preview captured image option disabled) the phone takes four seconds. Remember we are talking 8 MP images here with each image about 1.5 to 2.5 MB in size. The camera can thus be said to be quite fast, which is even more impressive for an early firmware.

The quality of the camera was overall pretty good. The colors were slightly exaggerated, so purists won't be very happy. As far as the details are concerned, this is one of the weaker areas of the N86 camera. The details were not that great as you would expect from an 8 MP phone. This was obvious from pictures that involved foliage of trees at a distance or grass. The dynamic range was also not great. Areas with a bright light source were blown up with no way to correct it later on in an image editor.

The wide angle lens is like a double-edged sword. Although it is great for capturing landscapes or a large group of people, it also means that your subject will be smaller since the camera is basically putting more data into the same space. This also means the details will be compromised and the only way to prevent that is to move in closer to the subject to fill the screen with it.

The variable aperture was a good tool. Even when taking pictures in brightly lit areas the pictures did not come out blown up or overly bright. In low light the aperture opens up extra large to allow more light in and thus the image does not come out too dark, even without the flash.

The phone can also record videos in VGA resolution at 30 FPS. The quality of videos is very good but it is time Nokia upgrades to a resolution beyond VGA.

Now coming to the music playback of the phone, the N86 uses the same music player as in every other S60 phone. This player is one of the best out there. You get categorization of music into various categories. You can edit the ID3 tags of files. You can view or add album art to songs. It has a very good search system and the scrolling through long playlists is blistering fast as well. You get an eight band manual equalizer with several presets and the ability to create unlimited presets of your own.

Then there is also sound balance, stereo widening (useless) and bass booster (even more useless). Finally you also get the customary Repeat and Shuffle modes, along with some choppy flash based visualizations thrown in for good measure (the only one usable is the spectrum). The phone also has a 3.5mm headphone jack and a two stereo loudspeakers. The phone also comes with a pair of high quality in-ear earphones and an adaptor with remote control for the music player.

The sound quality of the N86 was excellent. The bass was deep and powerful and the mids and highs were crisp and clear. The entire frequency spectrum seemed perfectly balanced. The phone was also fairly loud in earphones. However a weird thing was that as far as volume in headphones was concerned, the E75 that we recently reviewed was actually louder than the N86.

The supplied earphones were much better than the usual low quality stuff that comes shipped with other Nokia phones. They were of the in-ear type and did a decent job of blocking out noise. As fas as the sound quality was concerned, they were really good with a nice warm sound signature with good bass and mids. The treble could have been a bit more crisp however overall the sound was definitely decent.

The loudspeaker was the polar opposite however. They were fairly loud but the sound quality was pathetic. It seems they were more intent on providing a virtual surround effect rather than actually playing the music.

The N86 also has a built-in FM transmitter. The transmitter transmits the music from the phone over FM radio waves. Any FM radio receiver within the range of the transmission (which is about 2 meters/6.5 feet) can receive the broadcast and play the music. This useful in places such as a car. The transmitter however uses a lot of battery power and has a short range.

The images and videos are accessed from the Gallery menu. The images appear in a circular carousal type format. The images always open in landscape mode and there is little that you can do about it. You can also view them in a slideshow, but there are no different modes and you always get the same standard mode with no option for background music. The images open quite fast and zooming into them is fast as well, however panning takes some time.

The videos open in portrait mode but you can view them in full-screen mode as well. Just turn the phone around and let the accelerometer do its thing or slide the phone the other way. The phone can play up to VGA resolution videos at 30 FPS with ease (seeing as the camera actually records them at this setting). The kick stand is really a nice for watching videos. Unfortunately when the phone is kept on a table away from you, the display looks small and you wish it came with a bigger display.

The Nokia N86 also has a built-in FM Radio. The radio supports RDS as well. You can save the frequencies in the 50 preset memory available. The reception strength was quite good except when indoors. There was also an Internet radio application which can use if you have a fast enough EDGE/3G/Wi-Fi connection, not to mention an unlimited one.

The Nokia N86 comes pre-installed with the N-Gage app.. This is a hub for all your games and the related info and to communicate with others on N-Gage Arena with your N-Gage ID. You can download and play demo and then of you like them you can buy the registration codes and fully unlock the games. The N86 comes with seventeen N-Gage games pre-installed with a registration code which you can use to unlock any one of them.

Web
and GPS Navigation

The web browser in the N86 is the famous S60 browser. It is based on the equally famous Webkit engine that runs under the hood of Google Chrome, Apple Safari and the iPhone's Mobile Safari as well. This is basically the best browser you can find on a non-touchscreen based phone. The browser is super fast and loads pages just as they would appear on a PC screen. You get a mini map mode which tells you your position on the page while scrolling. You can zoom out and zoom in on the text or on the page. There is tabbed browsing but new tabs are only open by links on the web page and a user does not have the choice to open links in a new tab. Also the browser supports downloading you can only download files that the phone recognizes.

N86 also has built-in GPS with A-GPS support. The Maps software lets you navigate around and shows your position on the map. You can either download the map for your country or the location you are planning to go from Nokia Maps software and save it on the memory or you can let the software download parts of the map on the fly as you navigate using GPRS or 3G.

Nokia's Maps software is really good and quite feature-rich. The turn-by-turn voice navigation service is also available on the N86, but it is a paid service. There is also a built-in compass to tell you the direction where you are pointing.Another alternative to the Nokia Maps software is the Google Maps, but since Nokia's software is so good, you won't need any other software.

Battery LifeThe Nokia N86 is powered by a 1200 mAh Li-Ion battery. In my testing the phone lasted for about a day and a half of usage. The battery was brand new and had not gone through sufficient charge-discharge cycles to reach through its full capacity. Once it gets there, I have no doubt that the phone could easily last for two full days on a single charge. I mostly used it for music, calls, messages, internet usage and camera. Do bear in mind that using Wi-Fi, GPS and FM transmitter uses a lot of the battery so if you want to get the most out of your battery, then you need to use these features less.

Verdict

The Nokia N86 8MP is one of the best all-round devices that I have seen in a long time. It tries to do a lot of things and the best part is that it excels in most of them. For starters it has a very good build quality, which gives a great sense of solidity and instantly gives a feeling that you are getting your money's worth. The display quality is top notch and although the sunlight legibility is poor and the display could have been larger, the colors and the black levels are simple too stunning to ignore.

Features are something all high-end Nokia phones excel in and the N86 is no different. It is armed to the teeth with everything that you can image and some you can't. Just a look at the spec sheet and once again you get the same feeling that you are getting a lot for your money.

As far as the camera performance is concerned, Nokia was late to the 8 MP party, and although they armed their phone with interesting little tricks like wide angle lens and variable aperture, it still cannot beat established rivals like the Samsung INNOV8 and the Sony Ericsson C905, at least on the current firmware. Apart from the camera, the multimedia performance is superb and so are other things like connectivity and web browsing.

The N86 is priced at Rs. 24,500, which places it on par with the C905. The C905 might be better as far as the camera is concerned, but the N86 blows the Cyber-shot away on every other front. As for the INNOV8, it costs around ten grand more and has nothing special to justify that price difference. The Samsung Pixon and the Ultra Touch are good phones as well, but they lack the smartphoneability of the N86.

In the end, the Nokia N86 8MP is the best and most complete phone that you can buy in this price range. Period.

Latest Mobile Phone Full Specification

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