Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia seems to have made it a habit of delivering one stunner after another. As if the introduction of the N series wasn’t enough to strengthen the stake of Nokia patrons on its reputation, the release of the N85 just made it even bigger. Released in August 2008 in Finland, this multimedia beauty was soon offshored and was available in the international markets by November.

As a multimedia phone, the N85 harnesses all the essential features to make it a “Total Package” mobile phone for all sorts of users. With a sleek two-way sliding form factor that exudes elegance the moment you lay your eyes on it, the N85 follows close on the heels of the much similar N96, but with a comparatively reasonable price tag. The performance of the N96 and its response in the market made it easier for Nokia to improvise in the newer version, the Nokia N85. The new release was ceremoniously worked up to offer a ubiquitous platform for avid gamers, music lovers and web crawlers alike.

The N85 has a voice-guided navigation tutorial for new users who like to absorb every bit of the phone’s technical build-up. Entertainment is the key aspect of the phone, even as an active matrix OLED technology brings 16.7 million colours to life to take care of the looks department. A horde of data network platforms like CSD, HSCSD, GPRS class A, EDGE class B, HSDPA, WLAN, various e-mail protocols, Internet protocols and supported markup languages make the N85 a real deal in the communication and navigation section. It’s clearly a more advanced device than its predecessor and offers more alternatives, and thereby a global appeal to users.

The slide keys with a Navi Wheel and intelligent key illumination are major improvisations on this phone. But, what you really need to look out for is the compilation of a 5 megapixel camera (2584 x 1938 pixels) with CMOS sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, and Tessar lens and the Nokia Nseries digital music player that plays almost all music formats besides some additionally effective features. With the kind of high-end features that this Quad-band EGSM phone packs in, you would think this is going to be a disaster with several hang-ups. But the maker assures the phone carries enough power to run all the applications smoothly. Even the video recording prowess of the Nokia N85 is at a high here with the main camera wielding recording abilities of up to 30 frames per second with a maximum of 8x digital zoom, and supports mp4 and 3gp formats with H.263 and H.264 codecs.

So many features and applications grace the Nokia N85 that the phone’s distinctions from utility-specific gadgets like digital cameras and music players walk a thin line here. But, that’s exactly how Nokia works and we at best can simply make the most of what we have in hand.