I finally got my hands on Nokia’s new entertainment phone for those seeking a more enjoyable gaming and music experience. Nokia wants to elevate new owners of the N81 8GB to another level – now whether that’s true or not is yet to be seen in my full review.

The N81 8GB has a non-removable onboard 8GB flash memory but lacks the ability for additional memory.  It runs on WCDMA 2100 + E850 / 900 / 1800 and 1900 MHz.  The phone will work in the US, however it will not be able to take advantage of AT&T’s 3G network.


The active matrix 2.4-inch QVGA color display offers 320 by 240 pixels with up to 16.7 million colors.    There are dedicated media keys for quick and easy access to music and video functionalities such as play/pause, forward, rewind, stop along with dedicated game and volume keys.  I like how Nokia added a device hold key for locking the device up.  I really like the addition of the multimedia key and Navi wheel.  It’s also worth noting that the 2megapixel camera is pretty decent capable of recording MPEG-4 VGA video capture of up to 15fps.


So far, I don’t see any performance issues as stated by a few other folks in the blogosphere.  That being said, over the next couple of days, I intend to test-drive the N81 8GB to see if it lives up to Nokia’s promise.

Click to view the entire Nokia N81 8GB image gallery.

Thanks for your patience, there are so many phones to review and so little time…