While its substantial 8GB onboard storage hits the right notes for a big-playing music mobile, the N81 8GB is effectively a lower-key side-man to Nokia’s blockbusting N95 8GB smartphone. Released around the same time as the N95 upgrade, the N81 8GB is also based on the S60 3.1 platform, so has much of the media handling sharpness of that model, but is light on some of the higher-end features. It also has a distinctly different feel in its design and handling.

The N81 8GB has easy to set-up WiFi built in, which is useful for high-speed downloading and browsing, as this handset lacks HSDPA, using standard 3G data speeds over mobile networks.

It also lacks high-quality cameraphone shooting, with just a modest two-megapixel camera built in. A-GPS satellite location finding is also absent on this model.

Design

The N81 8GB has a conventional sliderphone mechanism, but it’s far from svelte, measuring a chunky 102mm (h) x 50mm(w) x 17.9mm (d) and weighing 140g.

However, it’s the bodywork of the N81 8GB – particularly when the control set-up comes into play – which provides much of the love-it-or-hate-it novelty to the device’s design and handling.

A smooth, glossy black plastic front panel surrounds the phone’s reasonably-sized 2.4-inch 16 million-colour QVGA display. It feels more plasticky than the N95 8GB but build quality is sturdy enough.

Central to the phone’s control system is the Navi scroll key D-pad. This does the routine directional navigation role perfectly well, but there’s also an option to switch it into Navi wheel mode. This acts like a kind of iPod click wheel, scrolling through menus and lists with a touch around the rim of the wheel. It’s not as reliable or precise as the Apple gadgetry, though, and can be a tad frustrating to use.

The controls, surrounding the phone’s central navigation D-pad, are mostly standard Nokia S60 – with an unmarked multimedia menu key joining softkeys and main menu buttons. This multimedia button pulls up a carousel, displaying recently accessed content and other lists for quick access.

The skinny Call and End buttons are curiously shunted to the edge of bodywork, which may look good to the designers, but in practice makes them more awkward to use.

That leaves more space for ‘hidden’ music player controls, as the minimalist control panel gets rather busier when the music or video player’s activated. Suddenly, a whole bunch of player controls appear, glowing through the black plastic panelling surrounding the Navi scroll pad. Clever, huh? It might be more so if it wasn’t so tight for space. On the single plastic panel, this can feel rather cluttered, and even when the Navi wheel option isn’t active, this can lead to inadvertent mispressing of adjacent buttons.

This aside, most control navigation is fairly routine S60, however, with the usual icon-driven menu system and plenty of user-definable shortcuts on the homescreen.

The numberpad buttons on the slider are reasonably sized, but the action for texting is a bit on the stodgy side.

Music and video playback

The music player is one of the highlights of this device. Its storage lends itself to being filled by tunes, which, as well as copying over from a PC via USB or Bluetooth, can be downloaded over the air. On top of regular mobile network services, Nokia Music Store software is embedded for those who want to browse, buy and download tracks from Nokia’s tune catalogue.

The music player software uses a typical S60 interface that carries a familiar set of track categories and playlist options. You can use the Navi wheel option for zipping through tracks. The audio performance can be impressive.

The in-box headset is average quality and sounds acceptable, but there’s also a standard 3.5mm headphone socket built into the phone, so you can add your own better quality earphones.With our reference Sennheiser headphones, it sounded lovely and clear, with good dynamic presentation and plenty of bass punch.

Using supplied Nokia software, copying tracks from a PC is straightforward, and you can sync with Windows Media Player 11 on a PC. Anyone trying the Nokia Music Store is advised to use WiFi for faster browsing - and potentially lower cost data downloads, if you don’t have an all-in mobile data deal. Users can also enjoy the phone’s serviceable FM radio function.

While the music player does the business, the camera is disappointing. It’s a fixed focus shooter, so detail and quality of snaps are limited. It has a variety of settings adjustments, but results were patchy and the colour reproduction was inconsistent. Some images came out OK but others were poor. Low-light shooting wasn’t particularly effective, despite the LED flash.

It can capture video at above-average VGA resolution, but its 15 frames per second recording looks average mobile quality in playback. Face-to-face video calling is supported, with a secondary camera on the front of the phone. Users can also download and stream video content, too, and watch videos copied over from a PC; RealPlayer software provides a pleasingly slick way of viewing clips on the phone, although the screen viewing space could be bigger.

Although not geared up for GPS, Nokia Maps software is included onboard; you can use it for over the air route-planning and location searches, with mapping delivered onscreen. However, for full Sat Nav style tracking, you’ll need to hook it up to a Bluetooth-enabled standalone GPS receiver.

N-Gage support

Gamers will be pleased to find support for Nokia’s N-Gage advanced mobile gaming platform. The N81 8GB even has extra dedicated gaming keys above the screen. Demo games are available to play before purchase and the quality of games is impressive. The control configuration of this particular handset doesn’t necessarily lend itself for great play though.

As well as full email and instant messaging, this device has a typically well-rounded selection of organiser tools and PIM functionality. It has a text-to-voice reader, voice memo function, plus the usual roster of calendar, notes, calculator and so on, plus document viewer software for email attachments and sideloaded files.

Battery life is acceptable. Nokia estimates up to 17 days on standby, with up to 3 hours’ talktime on 3G networks (or 4 hours in GSM coverage). Call handling got the thumbs-up, with a top-class perfromance under a variety of network conditions.

The N81 8GB plays to its strengths, with a fine quality music set-up and performance to go with the hefty storage capability. It delivers a solid set of S60 functionality, and WiFi is a welcome plus, although its low-grade camera is disappointing.

As a lower specified range-mate of the N95 8GB, it puts in a decent enough shift. But while offering a novel design element, the control panel media buttons set up can make the whole control pad set-up feel too busy, cramped and fiddly. Other uprange Nokia Nseries models offer a better all-round smartphone solution.