The Swiss Army Knife entertainment phone.
Before we start off it needs to be pointed out that I’m not a gamer, don’t really like games and my Nintendo Wii is gathering dust. I may not be the best person to review a gaming phone. The Nokia N81 8GB does it all. Almost. It’s a powerful phone. Here are the specs.
The idea of it being a Swiss Army knife for entertainment is important because it’s probably trying too much to be everything. Incorporating the N-Gage gaming platform, this does photos, videos, Wifi surfing the web and good enough games. The games are fun enough but this reviewer isn’t really a gamer so doesn’t appreciate them but then perhaps a serious gamer might appreciate them even less. Snake? That’s enough for me.
There’s always a trade-off between design and thinness and power and most times Nokia decides as an engineer not as a designer so we get some of the most powerful phones in the world but also some of the clunkiest. However with this phone it has the size of the N95 (a fantastic power-phone) but with a lot less power. A two megapixel camera is severely disappointing for this phone and it being part of the N series.
Others have talked up the battery power of this phone but I didn’t find the battery life to be that impressive and with WiFi left on, the battery drained quite quickly.
Music
8GB of music storage is good, the music player itself is pretty good but with a music store with DRM crippled music and a website that hates Firefox users, I can’t see a reason to buy any content from Nokia. Battery life when it comes to music is pretty good actually and as far as I can see it kicks the ass of the iPhone.
Games
There are a lot of titles with more promised. That’s as much as I can say really. Again I point out my lack of interest in games and gaming.
Summary
Personally I was disappointed with the phone when compared to having used an N95 and their lovely range of thin music phones. Nokia may once again need to rethink the idea of games on phones with this offering. It still gets 3 out of 5 because it does have the power options, though let down by a lo-spec camera. I’ll happily send the phone out to a gamer and see what they think if Nokia are willing to submit it for another review.