The Nokia N86, with an 8MP camera, is the first phone from Nokia to have broken the 5MP barrier. It´s hardly a surprising development considering the market giving us such phones as the Sony Ericsson Idou with a 12MP camera and the Samsung Omnia HD incorporating an HD video camera. The N86 has some similar features to the N96 with the two way slider and kick stand but the design itself is extremely dull and unattractive. The typical Nokia functionality and ease of use are there, and the camera is brilliant and a fantastic development, the lack of touch screen and poor styling let it down.
As previously mentioned the camera is very good and the first of its kind with a 28mm wide angle Carl Zeiss lens. The mechanical shutter has an extremely fast action (1/1000th sec) reducing motion blur considerably and the internal memory is right at the top end with 8GB with a MicroSD slot to boost the memory even more to store films, video clips and music etc. With a 3.5mm head hpone jack, any set of standard head phones can be used, a major advantage for any phone. If you are looking to share your music with others, the N86 has dual stereo speakers and an FM transmitter for use with the car or home stereo, a nice little added touch.
With Personal Information Management tools, the N86 also has a big appeal to the business user enabling Email pushing, calendar synchronisation, contact sharing etc. Like the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic, Samsung Omnia HD and the LG KS10, the N86 runs on the S60 symbian platform and as well as the Info Management tools, it comes with GPS (and subsequently Geotagging), Java and web browsing and is fully integrated with Nokia´s OVI apps store if you desire any further applications.
Specifications
- Size: 103 x 51 x 17mm
- Weight: 149g
- Battery: 6.3hrs talk time / 315 hrs stand by
- Memory: 8GB plus MicroSD and SDHC
- Display: 2.6inch, 240 x 320 pixel
- Camera: 8MP, Auto focus, Video Stabilizer, Flash: Dual LED, Digital zoom, Geo tagging, White balance, Multi shot, Additional camera for video calls, Self-timer, Panorama
- Connectivity: GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA 1.8 Mbit/s/HSDPA 3.6 Mbit/s
- Media: MPEG4, RealVideo, WMV, H.263, H.264, Flash Video , Media Player, MP3, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, WMA, AMR, Stereo FM Radio with RDS
As is often the case with a ´breakthrough´ phone, Nokia have neglected so many other parts of the development of the N86 when breaking the 8MP barrier. With such an excellent camera and lens, we were surprised to discover they had not included a xenon flash and the lack of touch screen is a disappointment. If Nokia had spent that little bit extra on the design, touch screen and flash, this could have been a really good handset but as it stands, average is all we can say.
e can say.