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5.6 out of 10

Nokia N81

First seen: 7 august 2007

Information found in: from 130 sources in 25 countries.

Great Deal: $14.99

  • User Score (155)
    8.5 8.5 from 155 reviewers
  • Expert Score (43)
    7.4 7.4 from 43 reviewers
  • Design (36)
    5.8 5.8 from 36 reviewers
  • Value for money (18)
    5.1 5.1 from 18 reviewers
  • Features (12)
    5.5 5.5 from 12 reviewers
  • Ease of use (28)
    5.5 5.5 from 28 reviewers
  • Performance (4)
    4.9 4.9 from 4 reviewers
  • Sound quality (27)
    6.2 6.2 from 27 reviewers
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Pros & Cons

  • ovi service, great gaming abilities, slick sounding music player, awesome storage capacity, games look great
  • confusing button interface, looks like another nokia, touch wheel is poor, little thick, disappointingly meagre camera

More music. More games. More ways to be entertained. Download new tracks and enjoy your music collection. Watch your videos and podcasts on-the-go. Stay in the action with mobile gaming. It’s easy to find what you’re searching for and access it quickly using advanced web browsing with wireless LAN connectivity. There’s never a dull moment with the Nokia N81.

  • Store more music, videos, photos and more.
  • Explore media content fast with Navi™ wheel.
  • Dedicated music k…

Nokia N81

Released towards the end of 2007, the Nokia N81 is a smartphone packaged in a sliding form factor. The N81 is part of Nokia’s NSeries line of multimedia smartphones and is positioned primarily as a music and gaming phone. The first release of the N81 featured 12MB of memory with a microSD slot (expandable to up to 8GB). Nokia has since released an 8GB version of this smartphone. The N81 8GB version has 8GB of internal flash memory and does away with the memory slot. The 12MB version come…

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Nokia N81

Released towards the end of 2007, the Nokia N81 is a smartphone packaged in a sliding form factor. The N81 is part of Nokia’s NSeries line of multimedia smartphones and is positioned primarily as a music and gaming phone. The first release of the N81 featured 12MB of memory with a microSD slot (expandable to up to 8GB). Nokia has since released an 8GB version of this smartphone. The N81 8GB version has 8GB of internal flash memory and does away with the memory slot. The 12MB version comes in Cobalt Blue and Graphite Gray colors while the N81 8GB is available in Cocoa Brown. The phone measures 4 x 2 x 0.7 inches and weighs 4.9 ounces with the standard Li-Polymer battery. At 1050 mAh, the N81’s BP-6MT battery lasts up to 410 hours on stand-by and up to 4 hours of talk-time. The phone’s screen is a 2.4-inch Active matrix LCD featuring QVGA (320 x 240) resolution and supports up to 16.7 million colors.

Pictures and Video

The N81’s 2 megapixel camera can capture photos at a maximum resolution of 1600 x 1200 and record QVGA (320 x 240) videos at 15 frames per second. The phone also comes with a CIF front-facing camera for video calls.

Music

With 8GB of internal memory, the N81 GB can hold up to 6000 songs. Music playback is handled by the NSeries digital music player which supports a wide variety of formats. The phone also features Stereo FM Radio, integrated stereo speakers, media and volume keys and a 5-band equalizer. Other notable features include the ability to synchronize your music with your PC, Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) streaming and access to the online Nokia Music Store.

Gaming

The N81 is also compatible with Nokia’s N-Gage gaming platform. Games are played via the phone’s dedicated gaming keys and also features the ability to play in either portrait or landscape mode. For a fee, games can be downloaded from the official N-Gage website: www.n-gage.com.

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  • Reviews of Nokia N81

  1. Nokia N81 8GB Review

    Reviewer: PhoneArena.com
    29 November 2007
    Overall 7
    7.0
    Design 6
    6.0
    Sound quality 7
    6.5
     

    Overall, we can say that N81 8GB offers nothing new, compared to its predecessors from the series, save for the 8 GB memory. It’ll let you make neither perfect pictures, nor high-quality video clips, so if you’re looking for a phone with such characteristics, you’d better look elsewhere. However, if you’re keen on a phone with a lot of memory, good music player, good sound and perfect graphics of the games and at the same time you’re prepared to put up with the... Read more

  2. 26 December 2007
    Overall 7
    7.0
     

    We love the Nokia N81's mammoth 8GB of storage space and excellent music and gaming features. However, we wish it wasn't so bulky and that it had a better touch wheel. As a result it's not really the revolutionary multimedia handset that we were hoping for. Read more

  3. Nokia N81 8GB Review

    Reviewer: ConnectReviews
    11 March 2008
    Overall 7
    7.0
     

    The Nokia N81 just doesn't feel like something to spend $500 dollars on, you might want to look around for something else. Read more

  4. Nokia N81

    Reviewer: Wired
    15 February 2008
    Overall 6
    6.0
     

    So I got this box in the mail that said N-GAGE on it. But the cell phone inside didn't look like a taco. I was confused. I tried talking into the side of the slider - it worked just like a cell phone should. What''s this N-GAGE moniker for? Turns out, N-Gage is no longer the name of a specific phone-it's a platform, meaning that in order to wear the storied (er, buried?) badge a handset must meet certain performance criteria when it comes to mobile gaming. And the phone... Read more

  5. Nokia N81 (8GB, Unlocked)

    Reviewer: CNET
    22 January 2008
    Overall 6
    6.0
    Design 6
    6.0
    Features 7
    7.0
    Performance 6
    6.0
     

    The bottom line: We had high hopes for the gaming- and music-centric Nokia N81, but it ultimately disappoints with a bad design and buggy performance. Read more

  1. Nice looking phone but low in quality

    Reviewer: hayashi, BusinessMobileAsia.com
    14 November 2007
    Overall 4
    4.0
     

    I have bought 2 pieces of these phone and realize that each of them got some productions issues. The first silver one got a problem on the front, as the black front has a 1mm opening on the right that lift up the game button. The second blue one got a very lousy slider mechanism, it feels like you are using this phone for ages and every slacky and rattling during the usage of the front button. My colleague got the same phone 2 days later and got one where the left upper... Read more

  2. "Good apple of the N-Series lot"

    Reviewer: CNET
    2 June 2008
    Overall 10
    10
     

    I'm puzzled by the earlier reviews. This phone is far from sluggish, it's in fact quite zippy compared to N95 (both variants). The display is bright, sharp and great for playing games or view photos. The music player isn't sophisticated in interface but the sound quality is surprisingly amazing. The speakers are far better than portable media players, a handy plus when in the loudspeaker mode. The battery lasts a long time, its more than 7 months since I got mine and I... Read more

  3. Awesome Phone!!

    Reviewer: j, J&R
    26 July 2008
    Overall 10
    10
     

    It's a great phone to have. Easy to use and stylish too. I don't think I want to use another phone other than Nokia. I'm a customer for life. Read more

  4. sleek little toy

    Reviewer: PriceGrabber
    26 February 2008
    Overall 8
    8.0
     

    It has a plastic construction but overall Nokia is known for quality products, decent audio great music playback speaker The N81 has a FM radio built in and remarkably good texting capabilities, I haven’t tried downloading any games but the demos do show a very good video capability. If it weren't for the camera, it would be superior to the N95, it has all you expect in the N95, but a 2 mb camera instead of a 5 mb camera. Read more

  5. Decent as a WiFi phone

    Reviewer: Amazon
    10 February 2010 See Product at Amazon ($301.78)
    Overall 10
    10
     

    Used this phone only as a Wifi phone, mostly via Gizmo5. Worked decent enough, battery life was great, phone is of very high quality construction. For what I did with it, it was great. However, we didn't use it enough so I ended up selling it. If I needed a GSM phone, I would seriously consider this one. Read more or see product

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