In the spirit of better-late-than-never, we've finally done a brief summary of how the N81 / N81 8GB performs as a gaming phone for All About N-Gage's hardware section. This aspect of the N81 was missing from All About Symbian's original review of the phone as the N-Gage platform hadn't launched at the time, and we felt it was unfair to judge an N-Gage phone without N-Gage games.

Read on in the full article (http://www.allaboutngage.com/news/item/7320_What_is_the_N81__N81_8GB_like_.php).

In case anyone's wondering, we're lumping the N81 and N81 8GB together because they're the same phone. The only difference is the N81 8GB has a built-in memory card while the N81 has a card slot instead.

playing games on the N81 feels (in my opinion) perfect, if you wanna play it portrait (which i do for MHP and Brain Challenge) you can do, but for others like System Rush, Creatures Of The Deep and Asphalt - landscape is the better way..... and since the phone is small and compact (as well as nice weight) its a great phone to use as a gaming device.

the only downfall i dislike is the media buttons (play, stop skip fwd etc) - these seem in the wrong place and get caught often.

Yeah, it is VERY comfortable to use N-Gage on the N81 in horizontal mode, the game buttons do their job perfectly.

Emo185 is right about the multimedia keys too, they are a bit awkward to use and I found myself pressing the wrong ones occasionally. It doesn't help that the surface of the phone is completely flat, so you can't feel the media buttons with your fingers.