N85 vs iPhone 3G

[_mephisto_]

Ok guys, I don't want this thread to turn into a Nokia fanboy rant but I thought I'd post some comments on comparative features as I've been using both over the last couple of days.

I'd like to mention that I've always been a Nokia fan and defended the N95 8GB against the iPhone fanboys, however...

Being as impartial as I can I've decided to keep the iPhone and probably also keep the N85 (for only one reason!).

Head to Head comparisons in the main areas:

Ease of connection switching:

Much improved in FP2, destinations allows you to set defaults and priorities, and it seems to work quite well but only for some apps, others don't use it and still require you to pick a connection.

iPhone, just seems to work. If you've already connected to a Wi-Fi point it remembers and logs you on again, if not it uses 3G/Edge/GRPS in that order. You can't set priorities though but I guess the default Wi-Fi/3G order is the obvious choice anyway. You could switch off the Wi-Fi if you wanted to force 3G.

Winner: iPhone but only just against FP2, hands down against FP1 devices.

Browsing:

Safari is quick, it doesn't support Flash (rumoured update). Zooming in out is quick with multi-touch, landscape flip is very quick and smooth. Screen at 320x480 and 3.5 inch makes browsing on a mobile device fun again. I miss Opera Mini though, it's much faster and the layout of columns on large pages always works well.

Winner: Difficult to decide, both in-built browers have benefits over the other. To be honest I don't use flash sites much on the phone, so I'd give it to the larger screen and ease of use of the iPhone, however Opera Mini would still be my browser of choice and that will (probably) never appear on the iPhone.

GPS:

In the same spot indoors, it was MUCH quicker to get a rough lock and then zoomed in to a more accurate position on the iPhone. Downside is that it is just Google Maps (albeit a much nicer version than the one on the S60). Lack of use as a car navigation tool loses big points although rumours abound that something is in the works.

Winner: iPhone seems to have a stronger & quicker GPS module but is let down by software, if the support comes then it's a winner but for now I'd give that to Nokia. Although having an in car Tom Tom offsets that.

Media:

Restrictive on the iPhone (can be improved by Jailbreaking). No support for anything other than MP4 (from what I can tell), but saying that things like movie trailers from Apple don't work on the Nokia without re-encoding. Some apps work really well though, for example Flixster. Click on movie info and it loads up really good quality streamed movie trailers, something I could never do that reliably on the Nokia.

iPlayer website has a specific section for the iPhone. Works great over Wi-Fi. I streamed some stuff and it looks great on the bigger screen. Let down by the lack of downloading and live streamed radio that's offered by the Nokia app.

Music. Well as I already had all my CDs (thats 16,000 tracks) converted to AAC to play in my iPod, it was always a ballache to use a separate app to move them onto the Nokia. Which then wouldn't do gapless playback! It's an iPod, it works, well, perfectly. If you already use iTunes it's a no brainer. If you don't then it's a great audio player, but you wouldn't get the full benefit from it.

A quick point about the speaker. Yeah it's a single speaker, MONO, crap I thought. So I played the same track side by side on both the iPhone and the N85. The outcome was that actually the iPhone is louder and clearer, and I kind of thought with a distance of 6cms between the speakers on the N85, can anyone really hear the stereo separation?

The inbuilt YouTube client blows away anything on the S60, 'nuff said there.

Winner: Preference I guess. For me it's the iPhone as the restrictions are easily outweighed by the integration into iTunes, and the better music player, and the bigger screen. The S60 iPlayer client is better though.

Apps:

Well the App Store is everything that Download! should be. It's slick, easy to use and there are some great apps out there that are free. There's also a lot of crap that you need to sift through but the reviews built into the client app make it much easier to identify. Hopefully (but unlikely) Apple will start to relax there strict rules a little and more useful apps like Opera etc can be put up there. But for now theres some great stuff to do everything from checking movie times in your local vicinity to giving you full tv listings with Sky+ remote record and iPlayer "watch again" integration. in fact there's so much on there it's a bit overwhelming.

Winner: iPhone hands down!

Camera: Yeah, it's pretty crap. To be fair the 2MP photos look great on the screen, much better than the same picture taken at the same time and shown ON THE SCREEN off the Nokia. Transfer them over to a PC though and I'm sure you could tell the difference. No flash, well yeah it's a big downer, however with the issues I'm having at the minute with the N85 lighting up a dark room to autofocus even when I've turned the flash off it's actually nice to know that's not going to happen and piss people off! Side by side dark shots without flash seem better on the iPhone, I haven't had chance to transfer anything over to the PC to check them side by side there though.

No video recording inbuilt, although apps have started to appear which do this. However I doubt they will ever be 640x480 30FPS, it's not something I use on a regular basis so doesn't bother me that much but yeah, I guess this could be a dealbreaker for some.

Ditto for MMS, I can't recall the last time I sent or received one so don't actually miss it, but again if you really need it I believe there are workarounds.

Now the biggest surprise to me, battery life. This is fact guys not Apple fanboy bull****.

I had both the iPhone and the N85 fully charged.

I was in a weak 3G area so both phones were struggling for lock (o2 & 3UK)

I had both connected to a Wi-Fi point.

I played with the iPhone more, a lot more.

With the N85 I connected to iPlayer and streamed for about 5 minutes, I tested out Google Maps for a bit, I took some photos, I left it connected to Wi-Fi though as the iPhone was.

After about 12 hours the N85 switched itself off. I wasn't even using it so the 12 hours was when I looked at it and noticed it was off and needed charging it could have been earlier.

On the iPhone I streamed from iPlayer for 30 minutes using the speaker to play audio too. I played a full album (Elbow - Seldom Seen Kid) using the speaker. I made a few calls to family. I played with Google Maps. I downloaded lots of Apps from App Store over Wi-Fi and played with them. I took some photos. Did lots of web browsing over Wi-Fi. When I got the 20% battery warning I looked at the (dead) N85!

I checked the usage stats on the iPhone. It stated that I'd been "using" it for just short of 5 hours. That was very heavy usage, not normal day to day usage. It didn't hit 10% before I went to bed and stuck them both back on charge.

I'm not sure what Apple do the conserve battery life but they do it VERY well, in fact I was pretty amazed at how long it lasted.

The biggest worry I have with it is it's not a phone to take down the pub on a night out, and that is the only reason I'm keeping my N85. For everyday use it's the iPhone for me, as I keep it on my desk, or in my jacket pocket. But if I'm out for the night and I only have a shirt on and no jacket then the N85 fits into a pants pocket easier.

It's a shame that such a great phone is resigned to being a "on the piss" phone but for me I can't see any reason why I'd use it on a day to day basis over the iPhone.

Feel free to question any of my above observations and I'll be totally honest with you. I have no axe to grind with Apple or Nokia so both got a fair crack of the whip, in fact I've always stuck up for the N Series, but having used the iPhone for the last 4 days rather than reading reviews or a brief play in the o2 store it's won me over, it has it's flaws, but for me it's what I'll choose as my everyday phone.

[kyle]

Good comparison, however remember that the N85 is only on its second firmware update and much of the problems you encountered have been with software.

Also Ive tested the iphone 3g against my n85 and my n85 blows the iphone away, much louder and clearer

[roberth]

nice review......

why dont you click the link to my blog....
i also have a comparison there....

[_mephisto_]

Originally Posted by kylepsp

Good comparison, however remember that the N85 is only on its second firmware update and much of the problems you encountered have been with software.

Also Ive tested the iphone 3g against my n85 and my n85 blows the iphone away, much louder and clearer

I'm not sure any of the specifics mentioned can be improved via firmware updates.

Possibly the GPS lock speed although I guess it boils down the to actual hardware used. From what I can find the iPhone uses a new(ish) Broadcom GPS chip which outperforms Sirf III, the N_Series phones only have a Sirf II chip from what I recall.

Maybe the night mode shots can be improved and the autofocus flash can be fixed.

But it still has it's limitations of screen size and at the moment a major battery life problem.

Also the iPhone software is only at v2.2 so there is an equal chance that as (if) Nokia improve the N85, Apple could improve the iPhone.

Like I said it's swing and roundabouts, they both have different markets I guess. As an owner of both the iPhone does what I want almost perfectly, the N85 is good, but not as good.

As for the sound, well I tried the same tracks on both with the speakers and through headphones.

To be fair the N85 goes louder but at the cost of distorting the music, pointless in my opinion. The iPhone never distorted, and at the point where the N85 didn't distort, the iPhone was louder both through headphones and the speaker(s).

[kyle]

Originally Posted by _mephisto_

Also the iPhone software is only at v2.2 so there is an equal chance that as (if) Nokia improve the N85, Apple could improve the iPhone.

The Iphone has had about 8 updates, the first releases were extremely buggy and crashed alot, I think once the N85 is updated it will iron out a lot of its issues

[_mephisto_]

Originally Posted by roberth

nice review......

why dont you click the link to my blog....
i also have a comparison there....

Interesting, I wondered what the N97 would be like. As for some of your points well I'll counter some, not wanting to turn this into a Apple v Nokia thread though but what occured to me when I started playing with the iPhone was I was attempting to think of reasons why I should take it back and then say to all those iPhone owners, "well I had one and took it back because...", and I couldn't honestly think of any.

No MMS, yeah ok, uhm, the last time I used it was? Oh, not really missing it then...

"Only" 16GB of storage, 'cause I need more for...uhm, oh hang on...

No video recording, probably the biggest issue for me but not a dealbreaker as the last time I actually bothered taking a video on my phone was, uhm, to test whether it worked!

Not sure what point 10 was, iPhone does TV Out, and I'm using different earphones with it.

Removable battery, I'll give you that. However unlike the N-Series the iPhone did get through a full day of heavy usage without requiring me to swap batteries.

Video calling, does anyone actually do this?!

Voice dialling, ditto the above...

SMS forwarding, never needed to do. Multiple user SMS, never done (one maybe to tell people I had a new mobile number!)

Bluetooth, yup, I do miss that but not enough to make me want to take it back to the shop.

2MP camera, ok it's not great but if the pictures you take on your phone are for showing on your phone (which mine usually are) then they all get resampled down and then they look 10X better on the iPhone screen that the N85.

So overall, yeah there's some thing missing, but in all honesty they're things I never use so I don't miss them.

However what it gives me extra like proper iTunes integration, better battery life, better GPS lock, seamless WI-FI to 3G switching, easy to use interface with seamless linking between apps, bigger screen etc outweights the missing features.

In my opinion... ;-)

p.s. I do want a play with an N97 though!

[_mephisto_]

Originally Posted by kylepsp

The Iphone has had about 8 updates, the first releases were extremely buggy and crashed alot, I think once the N85 is updated it will iron out a lot of its issues

Ok, but what I mentioned as the failings in the N85 aren't firmware issues they're hardware issues. They aren't going to get fixed are they?

To be honest having had an N85 since release day I've been more than happy with the firmware (apart from a few quirks), I just don't see Nokia ever producing something quite as slick as an iPhone.

Like I said each to their own, I'm sure other people will disagree and will have very valid reasons why they do.

It made me realise how cumbersome the S60v3 interface actually is...

[kyle]

The iphone is a matter of prefrence in my opinion, if you want your phone to just work, go for an iphone. But if you want good features go for an N85

[_mephisto_]

See this is the bit I don't get:

"if you want good features go for an N85"

I've got both, I've been using Nokias since the early 1990s, I've owned more phones than I care to recall, but I can't sit both of them side by side and think "wow, the N85 is so much better", it just isn't...

[Moz]

When people come onto a Nokia forum and ask for a Decent feature packed phone. 9/10 times they'll get a Nokia phone mentioned to them.

As you'd expect from such a website like ours.

I was the first to admit the iPhone is a decent bit of kit. But functionality prevails over aesthetics for me. Hence my large collection of Nokia's.

You didn't expect anything else did you ?