Nokia N81, a long awaited phone has come to town. Expensive glossy look, combined with advanced technology, it is one you must take a look at. The phone is advertised as GPS, music, and gaming featured phone. Is this phone that powerful as all-in-one gadget?

Thanks to Nokia Indonesia, 3GWeek is able to carry on this review. We get the 8 GB built-in memory variant without memory slot, while other variant has memory slot with not big internal memory. This sliding phone covered with black glossy color. Quite look like LG Chocolate, but definitely more elegant.

The phone is positioned in high-end multimedia area, but not concentrates on camera thingy since it is controlled by N95. I would say that this gadget is very suitable for young person who loves gaming since this phone is powered with n-gage application exclusively. Nokia is expecting to widen the n-gage availability to other line up soon.

The phone is packaged in quite big box. Featured Maroon 5 as their artist (and pictured in front with song bonuses), the packaging includes charger, stereo earphone with music playing menu (play, stop, backward, forward), phone-to-USB cable, DVD for software, and manual book.

Let’s start to specific feature. We can start to turn it on without inserting SIM card to play basic feature with no network needed. The phone is handy; you can open the slide with only one hand. The loading time is quite fast compared to previous Nseries, maybe because it does not has many preloaded picture/music/themes. The phone is powered with Symbian S60 2^nd edition. We can see icons and front menu just like in N73 (or N95).

Overall the feature is pretty much the same like N73. One thing different is the availability of shortcut button. Listed in the right side, it will bring us to new menus; organize most used features, like music, games, GPS, gallery, contacts, and Internet.

The keypad is quite good, but I feel like the navigation keypad is not so comforting. The most disturbing thing is the placement of music-related buttons. Since it is near navigation keypad, we can misplace our finger to music-related button, resulting music to play, even if we don’t want to.

The music capabilities, even it is one of favored features, is not pretty impressive. With speaker or with earphone (plugged in the upper side), the phone does not reveal the best (in music phone class). For me, it is not as good as Sony Ericsson’s Walkman quality.

Since this phone is not camera phone, the 2 megapixel s picture created is, if I can admit, horrible. Too pale and not focus, the camera quality is really disappointing. Don’t expect anything for this area. One nice thing is you can take picture using front camera, which is also available for other 3G Nokia phone.

For connectivity, the phone plays nicely. Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, connects smoothly to other devices. The phone supports stereo Bluetooth with A2DP profile. As for wireless capability, it only supports 802.11(a) and (b).

The map feature is as same as Nokia 6110 Navigator. Although not as great as Google Maps, the preloaded map is filled nicely with several tourism attractions in Europe. All you need is find the suitable map and use it for your enjoyment.

The best part so far for me is the gaming section. Preloaded with 3 n-gage games application, soccer game FIFA 2007, spaceship game Space Impact Light, and racing game Asphalt 3, the application shows different level compared to Java-based competitor. Running in smooth graphics, the game will spoil every gamer out there and show us PSP or Nintendo DS gaming quality.

As sliding phone with full multimedia capability, N81 does not have direct rival. The closest one is probably Sony Ericsson W850 (and W900), with the absence of GPS for Sony Ericsson. Actually the price is twice as much compared to those Sony Ericsson phones, although it may not give twice more enjoyment.

For conclusion, I would recommend this phone for gaming freak who search for the great mobile gaming experience. It may be an all-in-one gadget, but don’t expect much for its camera device and music capability. For all-in-one multimedia capabilities, I would prefer N95 instead.

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 Print Posted by Amir Karimuddin on December 28th, 2007