Nokia N86 8MP review

There are few high-end phones that escape the ever-increasing lure of the touchscreen these days. Mind you, an Android OS phone would be hard-pressed to get by without one. It’s a different ballgame for the Symbian OS though, as used in the N86.

In fact, we weren’t big fans of Nokia’s recent attempt to shoehorn a touchscreen into Symbian with the N97, so perhaps it’s all for the best that the N86 sticks to its traditional N-series guns with a non-touch screen and decidedly physical buttons, both on its face and slide-out keypad.

Whether of not you’ll get on with the N86 largely depends on how averse you are to this brand of styling. Looking for iPhone-like functionality? You should probably look elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean the N86 doesn’t deserve praise as a robust workhorse of a phone.

At 16.5mm deep, the N85’s form factor befits the adjective ‘reassuring’ more than ‘sleek’ or ‘svelte’, but the build quality seems to be up there with the best of the N-series phones. The double slider mechanism is smooth and very definite, enough to give you confidence that it can take on the slings and arrows of everyday usage without so much as the flutter of camera lens cover.

Unsurprisingly, said lens cover is much the same as the one we saw on the N85, but should do the job of protecting the precious camera lens perfectly well. It’s an important job too, because the camera is one of the N86’s key – and strongest – features.

The N86 features an 8-megapixel sensor, and although that may no longer evoke gasps, since 12-megapixel phones are already winging their way towards phone shop shelves, it offers enough to convince casual snappers to leave their compacts at home. We took the N86’s camera out for a test drive and, although we have our reservations, the results were easily good enough to produce perfectly good 6x4-inch prints.

However, compared to some of the other 8-megapixel snappers we’ve tried out this year, the N86 is a bit keen on processing. It produces conspicuously sharpened images that will frequently appear noisy in darker areas and have the potential to offend purists. However, unless you’re zooming-in to a 100 percent pixel view or beyond, the results that the N86 comes up with appear vivid and accurate. The dual xenon flash means it can fare well in low-light conditions too.

While the 2.6-inch screen won’t do justice to your photos in the same way as an iPhone or HTC Hero, especially since it’s a mere 240x320 pixel resolution example, the display uses AMOLED technology that ensures a great contrast ratio – lovely deep blacks, in other words. Considering this, it’s a pity that the N86 doesn’t support more video codecs. You might not want to watch the uncut version of Das Boot on a 2.6-inch screen, but TV episodes on the way to work aren’t out of the question.

We tested a few handfuls of different video formats out with the N86, but we could only get Real Media files working without a hitch. In its official specs, the N86 supports .mp4, .3gp, H.264, H.263, .3gp and .rm. While it may sound like a long list, we couldn’t get a simple Divx file to play, arguably the most important format for a great many users. There’s even a kickstand surround to the camera to make video watching more pleasurable, although it’s predictably a lot less sturdy than the rest of the N86’s frame.

It may have started to sound like the N86 is simply a fairly unremarkable phone with a good camera, but we do think it’s a solid choice for a certain type of buyer – one looking for a phone with a traditional feel but a relatively advanced feature set. After all, it’s got what is probably the N-series’s best camera to date, a wide spread of connectivity options, A-GPS and an FM transmitter to offset its relatively old-school buttons.

Each of the keypad buttons and the dual-function Internet/music buttons, revealed by pushing the dual-sliding screen downwards, are entirely separate and have a satisfying click to them that’ll appeal to anyone that bemoans the proliferation of touch-sensitive buttons.

They’re far more clearly defined than those on the N85 or N96, with the button and button surround entirely separate – rather than making the whole keypad a ‘button panel’.

It may seem like a small point to harp on about, but – camera aside – it sets the N86 apart from its N-series brothers. The N86 is an evolutionary step in the N-series, but for those that aren’t convinced by the touchscreen stylings of the latest Android or iPhone handsets, it’s a solid choice. We just wish the N86 a bit more capable with different types of video files.