Buy The Best Nokia N81 Contract Deals

 
The Nokia N81, like most of the “N” series, is a chunky phone that embodies features, with only a minimal nod to style. While the N81’s slider design is an attempt at stylishness in a mobile, this design really packs in the features, which means it bulges in your pocket. Don’t expect this to slide into your front pocket of denims without a tell-tale bulge.

The N81 is dominated by the bright and large and very crisp colour display, and is clearly geared for multimedia and gaming. The phone has very solid internet features, though not quite on the par of the N95; the Nokia Ovi portal is where it hooks up to by default, giving you one stop shopping for games, videos, music, GPS maps and ring tones, all at push button convenience. It’s still in the process of rolling out, and not all the features are implemented yet. On the other hand, what’s there is well laid out, easy to use, and decidedly convenient.

As a phone, the N81 is more than adequate, but won’t make you leap for joy. Reception is good, sound quality is good, and battery life is average for something with this many features – which means that you’d best get in the habit of plugging it into the charger every night before going to bed. Talk time is supposedly four hours, we got about three. Because of the extra gadgetry in it, the standby time was a bit under four days.

 
 
The N81 has a 2 megapixel camera, and while we can remember when that was considered a high end stand alone job, when phones for half the price have twice the camera, it sometimes makes you wonder why they bothered to include it.

The music features, which should have been a standout function, are somewhat ho-hum. You can get 8 GB of music onto the thing, and the music app is excellent, and easy to use – and the touch controls for volume are well thought out. However, the much ballyhoo’d touch wheel (like that of an iPod) isn’t up to snuff at all – it lacks sensitivity. Nokia appears to know this; it’s turned off by default. The headphones that come with the phone are quite good, and use a standard 3.5mm jack if you already have better ones.

What does make this phone work, and makes it 170 g of entertainment system, is the build in game console. It works with the Ngage games, and while they’re not up to a dedicated portable game system like the PSP, they are an absolute marvel compared to other gaming options; while none of the games bundled with the N81 allow head to head play over the internet, we are convinced that it’s only a matter of time.

Bottom line – if you’re someone who carries around a mobile phone, music player and portable gaming device, this is a good product for you. If you’re not enamoured of handheld game devices, there are other phones that give you a better camera or better music player or both in a small package.

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