Nokia N86 8MP Review

Messaging and Connectivity:

Here is where your text, multimedia and email messages are all stored. When you want to send an email, all settings get filled in automatically if you happen to use any leading service provider, such as Gmail or Yahoo. Things get even better, because Nokia Messaging comes preloaded on the Nokia N86 8MP and is by far, at least in our opinion, quite comfier to use than the standard Symbian S60 client. Unfortunately, this is the application that we had most of our troubles with. For some reason, the phone will sometimes fail to create email inbox, despite the message that setting up has been successfully finished. To our question regarding this issue, Nokia said it should be occurring on our unit only.



You connect to the Internet over 3G or via the built-in Wi-Fi. Either way, you will get to the standard browser that comes with the operating system and offers text panning, overview mode and partial Flash support. The latter can be illustrated with an example – YouTube player loads and starts without a hitch, but this is not the case with the web players on Viddler.com, Vimeo.com etc. Still, the browser would do the trick, although as whole, it´s not as good as the best ones found on touch sensitive screen cell phones.




GPS:

The Nokia N86 8MP offers GPS navigation functionality thanks to the built-in A-GPS and the Nokia Maps app. It comes preloaded on the device and is latest software version, because starting it shows the Ovi Maps logo. The software interface has not been significantly changed and the only novelty feature is the so-called Dashboard that provides information about your movement speed, altitude, coordinates and point estimation of how long it will take you to cover 1 km at the current pace. The app also features a digital compass that comes in quite handy when you navigate, because it orients the map in the direction you are moving. In some regions the Nokia N86 8MP comes with 6 months free drive navigation and lifelong global walk navigation, so you better enquire about the licenses at your local dealer when buying the handset.

Localization after cold start and with active internet connection takes about 20 seconds, which is a quite good timing indeed. Like most other cell phones with GPS that we have reviewed, getting all set is almost instantaneous after a hot restart. Unfortunately, the lack of active internet connection increases time to about 15 minutes after cold restart, which is rather mediocre, given there was no a single cloud in the sky and we were in the open with no tall buildings in the vicinity. We also noticed that sometimes the GPS would lose the satellite signal for no apparent reason, even in places we hadn’t had any troubles with other cell phones we tested.