It has to be said - the Nokia N81 is a curious mix of the utterly fabulous and the entirely inexplicable. No device is ever perfect, of course, and the N81 goes out of its way to present a few downsides. Good and bad, in more or less equal proportion, ying and yang, and so forth.
- The main frame of the N81 and the slider surround are made of superbly solid metal. Feels great and should last a lifetime....
- ... but the same can't be said of most of the rest of the hardware. From plasticky front face to plasticky and bendy battery cover to cheap and nasty keypad with cheap and nasty printed lettering, all the brownie points earnt by the metal chassis are lost here, I'm afraid.
- The light-up music control cluster is a little cramped, as some have observed, but I like the idea and I think that if I were a young user of the N81, with smaller fingers, that I'd quickly get used to the idea. And, for someone with music always 'on', having dedicated music control keys is a great idea. Ditto the top two gaming keys, though until we see more real N-Gage games, we won't know how successful these will be.
- The slide mechanism rattles. This has to be a downside and doesn't win the handset any prizes in the quality stakes. I do have some sympathy for Nokia here, sliding mechanisms obviously include moving parts and these parts are going to need some clearance. But still...
- I love, repeat love the naviwheel. Whether scrolling round through photos and videos, or through your music collection, the touch-sensitive naviwheel is just so utterly cool...
- ... it's just a pity they haven't put support for it into other applications. Apart from Music player and Gallery, rotating your thumb around does nothing at all in most apps - disappointing. Even worse, for some INEXPLICABLE reason, naviwheel support in its core applications is TURNED OFF! You have to know how to burrow into Settings to turn it on. Whoever decided on this was probably the same guy who was in charge of the Nokia N93i's microphone positions and mirror displays and this is a tragedy as he should have been fired years ago.
- I love the big stereo speakers and the great sound quality - and this also helps with providing game soundtracks. And there's a proper 3.5mm stereo headphone jack - Yay!...
- ... but, next to it, the power button is very, very hard and almost imposssible to press. And, staying with hardware, the camera's a measly 2 megapixels, fixed focus. This was great 2 years ago, but for a 2008 flagship Nseries phone there should be at least the same 3 megapixel, auto-focus plastic-lensed camera as in the E90.
I really wanted to like the Nokia N81 - there's a lot here to like, from the superb music handling to the Wi-Fi to the gaming keys to the solid chassis. But then the designers went and spoiled things by putting in tacky plastic front and back covers, a stupidly low-spec camera for such an expensive device and hiding one of the unique selling points, the naviwheel functionality, inside a Settings menu that no real world user will find.
So, watch this space for more detailed N81 coverage, opinions and reviews from Ewan and Krisse.
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 3rd November 2007