Nokia N85 and N79 official, no surprises

Today Nokia introduced officially two new members of the Nseries family - Nokia N79 and Nokia N85. The two devices come with rather different designs but both have quite extensive specs sheets to brag about.

Nokia N85

Nokia N85 is a quad-band GSM and tri-band UMTS dual slider, inspired by the controversial design of the Nokia N81. It's also got HSDPA support to improve network data transfer speed even further. Undoubtedly, the most exiting feature about the N85 is the display - a 2.6" 16M color AMOLED unit of QVGA resolution. There is a built-in accelerometer for automatic rotation of the UI and dedicated gaming keys for improving the N-gage gaming expirience.

Nokia N85

Some of the other features of the Nokia N85 include microUSB slot, 3.5mm standard audio jack and GPS. The handset running of the Symbian OS with S60 UI and Feature Pack 2 preinstalled will also have WLAN and Bluetooth among its connectivity options. A 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, dual-LED flash and autofocus assist light is mounted at the back of the device. It can manage the sweet VGA video recording at up to 30 fps. A secondary CIF camera is at the front to take care of the video calls.

The built-in memory of the Nokia N85 is 74MB and there is a microSD card slot to extend that. An 8GB card (the largest currently available on the market) will be included in the retail package. The final multimedia touches to the Nokia N85 are the FM radio and FM transmitter.

Nokia N85 will be available in Copper color in October for an estimated retail price of 450 euro (660 US dollars) before taxes or subsides.

Nokia N79

The bar-shaped Nokia N79 has a bit more modest feature list but has better (or so it seems to us) looks and a more compact boy. It still supports all the four GSM bands but the 3G works only on the 900 and 2100 MHz bands. The display on the N79 is a 2.4" QVGA one, capable of showing up to 16M colors. Wi-Fi, GPS and a 5 megapixel camera are some of its other more important features.

Nokia N79 also sports FM radio and FM transmitter, allowing you to broadcast your favorite tracks within a short range over radio waves. Quite as expected, it too runs on the Symbian OS with S60 v3.2 UI. Nokia N79, much like the N85, features the interesting Navi wheel navigation solution which we first came to know in the Nokia N81. The 3.5mm standard audio jack, the Bluetooth connectivity and the microUSB slot are hardly a surprise to anyone. The internal memory of the N79 is 50MB and it will be expandable through the microSD card slot (a 4GB memory card will be included in the retail package).

Nokia N79

The other upgrade of the Nokia N79 over the N78 (in addition to the improved camera and video recording) is its easily customizable exterior. The handset will come with two extra Xpress-on covers in the retail package and additional ones can also be purchased.

Nokia N79 color version

Nokia N79 will hit the shelves in Canvas White and Seal Grey color versions in October and will cost 350 euro (515 US dollars) before taxes or subsides.