Nokia today came out with a startling Autumn extension to what these days it calls its Nseries multimedia computer range ‘ dual slider handsets which are jam packed with entertainment options, ready for shipment in October.
The two additional devices, the N85 and the N79 both come with 10 N-Gage games bundled, a 5 megapixel camera with the same Carl Zeiss optics that are built into its N95 and N96 top ranges of handsets. Additionally they have a built in FM transmitter, so that like the iPhone and iPod they can transmit stored music to play through a car stereo.
The N85 comes with a 3 month subscription to a voice navigation service, and it has a phenomenal OLED display. OLED displays use about 40% less power than the LCD equivalent, offer far more brightness and contrast from blacks to whites and are tipped to eventually become the replacement technology for LCD. Right now OLED screens are just appearing on handsets, although Sony has a 3 millimeter thick 11 inch TV screen using the same technology. The N79 has a conventional 2.4 inch LCD QVGA screen.
Both devices attach to the Nokia Ovi portal, so can access the Nokia Music Store. The N85 has an 8 GB microSD card, the N79 a 4 GB card, so that’s a around 3,000 songs or four hours video storage for the N79, and double that for the N85. Both support playback of H.264 and Windows Media video, as well as Adobe Flash Video, RealVideo and 3GPP streaming.
Battery times appear to be phenomenal too, with the N85 having a talk time of 270 minutes in 3G,the N79 210 minutes, and the N85 supporting a video call of up to 160 minutes. Video playback is up to 7 hours on the N85 and 5 hours on the N79 and 30 hours and 24 hours respectively for listening to music.
If you simply turn the N85 sideways it highlights gaming keys and it can play DVD quality video at 30 frames a second.
Nokia says the N79 has superior web browsing so we assume there are different browsers in these two devices, though they both seem to offer Series 60 and can support all the browsers that supports. There is also an on device video editor. The N79 has a Widget pre-loaded to link to the Friendster social networking system, although you can just as easily connect to Flickr or YouTube through the browser.
Although both devices have 10 games pre-loaded, the owner can only sign up for one game as there is a single free game voucher, the others can be sampled and then need to be purchased.
Nokia Maps is also loaded on the N79, but can work on either device giving access to 15 million points of interest.
The N85 will retail for €450 (£358), the N79 for around €350 (£278), though we’re pretty sure that subsidies will be available shortly from major operators.