Camera Phones Plaza

Nokia N81 is a good multimedia phone. It has Symbian Operating System 9.2, a big screen and even hot keys for games.

The phone is available in two versions, the standard version and the 8 GB version. The only difference between them is that the standard one has card slot and the 8 GB one has integrated memory, but does not have a slot. It is not the same as in Nokia N95 and N95 8GB, where the differences between the two phones are both design and functionality.

Like any multimedia phone that respects itself, it has plenty of buttons. Besides the usual buttons under the screen used for answering and rejecting calls and for the menu, we have, on the side, the camera button and the volume control button.

N81 has a 3.5 mm headphone jack, which is great for a music phone. Almost all the headphones that come with the phone are of poor quality and I prefer to use mine. A new element is the button which locks the keypad. It is located on the top side, near the audio jack. Its usefulness is questionable. It seems easier to me just to use the combination of the two keys to lock the phone instead of searching for the lock button. Others might argue it is easier to give a single click of a button instead of pressing a key combination for locking.

Like all Nokia phones, it is easy to use.  You probably already know the Symbian menu. Although it has a complex menu, a Nokia S60 phone seems easier to use than an S40. Nokia N81 comes with a graphical interface 3rd edition with Feature Pack 1; that means it has the latest update. Opening various menus, and launching applications is done fluently, and the phone is acting well. It will not give the impression that it is slow or it does not have enough memory.

When it comes to messaging, the slide keyboard pulls the phone down. The menus for SMS and MMS are very clear and the messages are very organized. The keys, however, are flatter than they are usually. This is not a major minus, it depends on you, you should test one before you buy it, and maybe you cannot find this a problem.

The address book is the well known one for Symbian OS. Full, easy to use, you quickly find a phone number by typing a few letters. Lists of the last calls made, received and missed calls are also in place and do their job well. Being easily accessible, I prefer to look for a phone number there instead of getting into the address book. It is faster.

Nokia N81 is a multimedia phone and it will not disappoint in this matter. The pictures are clear on the quality screen. Gallery type application does not have anything new compared to other Nokia S60 phones, but there is no need for that, because it is already very good. The Audio and Video Players are not new, but they do their job well. Movies can be seen in both portrait format, and landscape mode. The phone does not have an accelerometer, so you move manually from portrait mode to landscape and vice versa.

The FM Radio is also present. It has a useful feature that downloads radios in a given city. This is useful so you do not have to wait to manually search for each station separately. The radio is stereo and works only when you connect the headphones, which are playing the role of the antenna. You will be pleased with it, because you may forget to copy new songs to your phone. On the radio, you can listen to fresh music without too much effort.

The camera is not worthy of this phone. Besides the fact that it has only 2 megapixels, the pictures are also weak (now that multimedia phones usually have 3 megapixels camera, not to mention the 5 megapixels camera). However, the megapixels are not everything; you can have many megapixels and the pictures can come out bad. Finally, returning to the Nokia N81, I noticed the same problem as in most phones. The pictures seem better on the phone display and can be sent via MMS, but if you download them to your computer, you see how weak they are.

If you love the internet, you are not going to be disappointed. The phone supports GPRS, EDGE and 3G, so it will work more than decent any mobile network with 3G or EDGE. The HSDPA technology is the missing link that would have made browsing even faster. However, HSDPA is actually useful to those that connect to the Internet from the PC using their phone as a modem. If you surf the Internet from the phone browser, than there is no big difference between 3G and HSDPA, if you do not download too much information.

I got excited when I saw that the phone has WiFi technology because in areas with hotspots you can surf the Internet quickly and usually free.

The web browser is very good; it renders without any problems even the more complex pages. It supports flash. It is true that a very complex page that is big or poorly made can block the phone. It is good that not all the phone gets blocked, I stopped the browser, I started again and I kept in mind not to get on that page that has problems. However, with the generous screen size, browsing the Internet just makes sense on such a phone. If you do not like the phone's browser, although I think it is good, you can install Opera Mobile.

Nokia's organizer is excellent. It does not matter if it is a S40 phone, or a Symbian phone. You can define your meeting type events and to-dos.  You have a separate folder for Notes. It can synchronize with Microsoft Outlook without problems.

If you plan to use your mobile for mobile office, than it is not a bad idea. QuickOffice, which you can install for free, lets you view files from Word, Excel or PowerPoint, and if you buy an upgrade, you can even edit them.

Nokia N81, including the 8 GB version is a good phone and it is very rich in functions. It is very suitable for media or for those who want to install many applications, more or less useful. I do not see this phone being used by a businessman or a person in search of a smaller phone.