Bored? Never again - the N81 8GB ships, too
Published by Steve Litchfield at 8:01 UTC, October 22nd 2007
Hot on the heels of the Nokia N95 8GB shipping news comes the followup announcement for the Nokia N81 8GB (with more of a gaming focus and dedicated game/music keys). Full press release below - we've got no less than three N81s on order from various sources and will bring you a full review ASAP.
Bored? Never again - Nokia N81 8GB now shipping October 22, 2007 Get and play music and games on the move
Espoo, Finland - Mobile entertainment just got more fun with the Nokia N81 and Nokia N81 8GB multimedia computers now available globally. Designed for the best in music and gaming, these devices come with dedicated music and game keys and are loaded with memory so you can store more and play more.
The 3D Multimedia Menu introduced in these devices is the first step to bringing a new user interface to the Nokia Nseries range. The new menu makes it easy to discover and enjoy your digital content and the Internet, and share your experiences with others.
"Accessing your portable music and games collection is not enough anymore," said Jonas Geust, vice president, Multimedia, Nokia. "Today people want to be more in control of how and where they consume their digital entertainment. They want to discover new favorites and share them without being confined to one location - and it's devices like the Nokia N81 that facilitate this."
The Nokia N81 and Nokia N81 8GB also offer the discovery of millions of tracks through the Nokia Music Store*. And, with their integrated Nokia Music Players, creating playlists and managing music collections on the move is a breeze. For enhanced sound quality, compatible high-quality headphones or speakers can be used with the standard 3.5mm headphone connector.
A preview of the N-Gage games service is also available in the devices, including playable demos of EA SPORTS(TM) FIFA 07, Asphalt 3: Street Rules and Space Impact Light. After the launch of N-Gage later this year, the full N-Gage application will be available for download. Players can then try all N-Gage games for free and buy only the ones they want.
The estimated retail price of the Nokia N81 is 360 EUR before subsidies or taxes. The Nokia N81 8GB is expected to retail for 430 EUR before subsidies or taxes.
Categories: Hardware, Links of Interest
Platforms: S60 3rd Edition
News Discussion
Unregistered
Its a soft concept to say this is a gaming centric device given that the specs really do not befit the title. Surely a better designed N95 gaming edition would fit the bill much better.
malerocks
Plus, the n93 form factor would be better suited for a gaming device. Think about it.
Unregistered
Did some googling to find out more about this phone. It seems like a big step backwards: poor camera, no 3D acceleration and no TV out, standard QVGA screen. Is there anything good about it?
Unregistered
Is the normal micro SD version of the N81 shipping as well?
viipottaja
First Unregistered: yes, price. This is a mass market device (although N95 has sold amazingly well for its price), so adjust your expectations. :)
krisse
I think it's totally deceptive to call ANY of these phones "gaming-centric". None of them are, they're all being sold above everything else as phones. The vast majority of phone users aren't really gamers, they buy phones as phones, and any phone perceived as a console is automatically going to shut itself off from most potential customers.
The N93 is IMHO probably the best for gaming as it has a layout almost exactly like the hugely successful Nintendo GBA SP, and chunkier buttons than the N93i. But the N93 came and went before Next Gen N-Gage even launched, so it was clearly never intended by Nokia as a gaming-oriented device, even though the N93's form factor does have that convenient side-effect.
Forget the original N-Gage, Nokia isn't going down that path. The point of Next Gen N-Gage isn't to compete with consoles, it's to compete with Java games, and Java games are successful partly because they run well on totally ordinary phones that aren't designed for gaming.
Look at the price for example: 6 to 10 euros per Next Gen N-Gage game is Java-level pricing, not console-level pricing. They're going after people who normally buy Java games, which is a huge market.
Unregistered
sorry but no hardware accelerated 3D graphics = no expectations now let me get back to my MBX'd N95 and iPod touch!!
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