Mar 03, 2009 12:06 AM
4221 Views
This is my first Nokia - I am a Sony Ericsson fan - but after some kleptomaniac took off with my W950i in a 2AC compartment(no less), I had to compromise and get a N81. The factors in its favor were its decidedly stylish looks, great audio capabilities(it has a dedicated DAC), connectivity options & the n-gage platform.
The downer - the small screen! I know for some of you its a good sized screen. But like me, if you have used a bigger screen before, the N81's screen size is very ordinary! And very difficult to view in bright sunlight!
I have owned this phone for 8 months now. I will give you my observations about its important successes or failings .
Keyboard - while slick looking, its slightly difficult to use without looking at it since there isnt much separations between keys. And the color has started peeling off the'0' key already! Not good quality .
The OS - Symbian 60 3rd Edition. One of the most popular OS in the world because of Nokia's market share, it means you can get applications of all sorts and hues . very useful. You wouldnt get ANY of these applications if you were to buy a Samsung or a LG. The most useful are ngpay(the all-in-one mobile commerce application), PVR mobile ticketing, Google Maps, Mobipocket Reader, Cricinfo Mobicast etc etc
Camera - horrible! Can never get a clean picture out of it. Anybody with any aesthetic sense would discard all photos from this phone
Music - very clean playback but pathetic pair or bundled earphones! Invest a little in a pair of good in-ear earphones like Creative EP630 - or filch a pair of Sony Ericssons from someone, like I did. Then you will have musical bliss!
n-gage. Just doesnt work! Apart from the inbuilt games, any gave trial version or legally bought version - just doesnt recognize the game file. Could be a issue with the firmware - I will try and update the phone firmware .
Internet - its not worth paying so much for this phone if you dont use the internet facilities. Google Maps alone is worth the money you spend on GPRS. The browser is very capable and displays 99% of the sites flawlessly - though the small screen is a big constraint. But most of the popular sites like facebook, picasa, flickr etc have come out with mobile versions of their site for smaller screens . With GPRS on your phone, you can track your location on Gmaps, get latest scores, book tickets or buy stuff on ngpay - while you are one the move!
Stability - not quite stable! If you are are heavy user like me, you will find yourself pulling out the battery atleast once a week if not more.
Interface - the Symbian S60 3rd Ed is a standard interface, but the N81 is blessed with something called Naviwheel - its basically a ipod-like control with your D-pad. It doesnt work all the time, but when it does, its rather slick. However the Naviwheel functionality is limited only to the music player and the gallery
Playing videos - its not such a great experience playing videos on this phone. It has only a 240x320 screen and only supports 3gp format playback. While converting to 3gp is not very difficult as software are available freely, but 3gp completely destroys the video quality. And more importantly, the inbuilt real player doesnt have good controls for stopping, continuing playback etc. Installing Coreplayer solves the problem somewhat since it supports many more video formats including Divx. But its not a free software .
