Last but not least in our coverage of Nokia handsets at CTIA is the handset that Nseries mobile photogs around the globe have been waiting for — the N86 8MP. This past February, the N86 8MP was the subject of one of Nokia’s most bizzare announcements to date. As MWC kicked off, Nokia was busy showing the N86 off in Singapore. Then as MWC was wrapping up, Nokia finally decided to re-unveil it at the show. Yes, odd. Nokia has a few N86s on hand at CTIA but despite the amount of time that has passed since its announcement, the handsets on display are still very obviously early hardware builds. Why do we say that? They’re actually labeled “N00”, as all early internal Nseries builds are, but the early placeholder has been covered up with black marker. We’re not kidding; just look at the image above. The firmware on the handsets is plenty stable however, more stable than the N97 firmware at least, and we spent a good amount of time with the device.
Our initial impression: it feels rushed. By that we mean it seems as though Nokia was so eager to push out an 8 megapixel handset that it opted to forgo the TLC that has been a main ingredient in the making of other, more refined Nokia devices. It feels cheap. Not N95-1 cheap, but still pretty cheap. Beyond that, the stunning 8 megapixel camera sits on the back of an otherwise uninteresting device that could easily be mistaken for one of several other Nseries models — because it’s basically the same old same old. Hit the jump for some more shots but our advice is not to get too excited about this one just yet. Let’s see what happens when Nokia starts slapping its upgraded 8 megapixel Zeiss shooter into some flagship handsets.
