Combining sophistication and stamina, the Nokia N85 is the engine to power your modern lifestyle. It’s a fully-featured Nseries mobile device, of course, with 3G and Wi-Fi, N-Gage gaming, A-GPS navigation and a 5 megapixel camera. But it goes one step the beyond the expected, using next-generation technologies such as power-saving OLED display, automatic geotagging and instant music downloads from the Nokia Music Store to join the dots in your digital network. It’s a two-way slider that works smoothly in both portrait and landscape modes, accommodating both busy work days and hectic weekends – often on a single charge of its 1200mAh battery. The Navi wheel makes browsing its 8GB microSD card for tunes, images or full-length videos a breeze, and there’s always the blistering HSDPA link to Share on Ovi or Flickr to share your favourite files. The FM radio isn’t just about picking up RDS stations – it can also transmit music to enjoy wirelessly on your car radio.

What they say

“If you’re after a fully fledged multimedia phone with most of the latest features, the N85 is hard to ignore.”

Ross Cantanzariti, PC magazine Australia

If you only do one thing

Limber up your fingers, load up N-Gage and submerge yourself in the Nokia N85’s ten pre-loaded N-gage titles. The 2.6-inch OLED display has a swifter response time than LCD screens, making for sharper, blur-free action, and crisper colours. Dedicated gaming keys (in landscape mode) are great for low-light power-plays.

Miscellany

Radio transmission has a long, not entirely hiss-free history. Here are some frequency-modulated facts from the early days of wireless:

• Nikola Tesla made (probably) the first public demonstration of radio communication in 1893, but just a year later, Bengali genius Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose used millimetre-range microwaves to ignite gunpowder at a distance.

 

• Three years before the sinking of the Titanic excited calls for compulsory radios on passenger ships, another White Star liner, the Republic, sent the first CQD distress signal by radio. All but three of its passengers were rescued.

 

• In the early 20th century, American Marconi monopolised ship-to-ship communications, to the extent that its operators were forbidden to exchange messages with non-Marconi vessels.

 

• The BBC was formed as a private company and began transmitting programmes (as station 2LO) in 1922. Countries that began broadcasting before the UK include the Netherlands (1919), Argentina (1920) and Malaya, Mexico, Uruguay, Russia and New Zealand (all in 1921).