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Nokia N81 8GB Cell Phone Review

Alfredo Padilla Published on December 27, 2007 Comment on this

Intro Making/Receiving Calls Software Other Features

Tour & Design Messaging Battery Life Value & Comparisons

Audio Quality Organizer Connectivity Conclusion

Imaging Multimedia Hardware Ratings & Specs

The Nokia N81 with 8GB of storage is Nokia's newest N-Series device. The N81 is marketed as a multimedia device, with excellent music features, a large amount of storage and support for Nokia's new music store and N-Gage gaming platform, although neither has launched in the U.S. yet. We found the N81 lived up to the hype as far as music and gaming goes, but it fell short in a lot of other areas. The 2-Megapixel camera was one of the worse we've ever seen on a mobile device, the controls were cramped and prone to errors and the handset felt heavy and not very durable. Throw in the fact that it's only available as an unlocked phone for $629 from Nokia USA and these negatives really start to grate on you.

Tour & Design - The N81 doesn't look too bad, but its plastic construction, audible creaks, and slider design leads to concerns about durability.

Audio Quality - The audio received and sent by the Nokia N81 was decent, but we felt the sidetone was a little on the low side.

Imaging - Terrible stills camera, but video was above average.

Making/Receiving Calls - We were able to dial numbers very quickly on the Nokia N81.

Messaging - The N81 is a solid messaging device and we were surprised at how well we were able to type on the rather small keypad.

Organizer - As a smart phone the Nokia N81 offers a full range of powerful organizer features.

Multimedia - The N81 has excellent music playback software and plenty of storage for your music.

Software - As a Symbian Series 60 device the Nokia N81 is powerful, extensible and flexible.

Battery Life - Talk time and browsing were both solid but we were disappointed by a rather low music playback time.

Connectivity - The Nokia N81 is well connected as a quad-band GSM device with support for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, we just wish it supported 3G for a U.S. carrier.

Hardware - Aside from the very good D-Pad we found most of the controls on the Nokia N81 to be difficult to use.

Other Features - The N81 can be used as a modem and has an FM radio built in.

Value & Comparisons - At $629 and with significant flaws the Nokia N81 is not a good value.

[page title="Tour & Design"]

Front Closed
From the front the Nokia N81 is dominated by a large 2.4 inch QVGA display. Above the display is the speaker for the phone flanked by two buttons that are meant to be used with NGage games. To the right of these is the lens for the VGA camera for video calling, which doesn't work in the U.S. Below the display are the controls, with a D-Pad surrounded by various buttons.

Front Open
When you open the Nokia N81 up you reveal the standard twelve-button keypad.

Left
The only features on the left side of the Nokia N81 are a large loud speaker near the top and the eyelet for a lanyard loop near the bottom.

Top
The top of the has a standard 3.5mm headset jack that also acts as a video out. Flanking it is the power button and a switch to lock or unlock the device.

Bottom
The bottom of the phone has Nokia's proprietary power port with the new slim design. Next to it is a Micro USB port and to the right of that is the pinhole for the phone's microphone.

Right
The right side of the Nokia N81 has a second loud speaker near the top with a volume rocker key beneath it. Near the bottom is the dedicated camera button.

Back
The back of the Nokia N81 houses the lens for the two megapixel camera and the LED flash.

Battery Out
The back cover of the Nokia N81 comes off in one piece and reveals the battery cavity. You have to remove the battery to get at the SIM card slot, which has a little tray that you pull out of the bottom of the phone up into the cavity to get a card in or out.

In the Box (5.0)
The Nokia N81 ships with a stereo headset, a separate wired microphone with music controls, a data cable, and charger.

Handling (4.0)
The Nokia N81 is a heavy device at 4.94 ounces and although it sits well in your hand there are a lot of angular edges. You'll definitely notice it if you try and hold this phone up to your head for a long call.

Portability (5.0)
At 4.05 x 1.97 x .7 inches the Treo 755p is a little on the thick side and definitely won't fit easily into a tight pants pocket. It should fit easily into a jacket pocket or a bag, however. The Nokia N81 is also a hefty device, so you'll notice you have it on you. It's not huge like the Sidekick LX, but it's also not a small device like the Samsung SLM.

Aesthetics (5.0)
The Treo 755p is styled in black plastic with bronzish/brown highlights. It's not a boring looking device, but it lacks the simplicity and clean lines that we tend to find attractive. Instead, like many Nokia devices, you'll find it dotted with buttons and ports. It's not ugly, but it's also not particularly attractive.

Durability (4.0)
We have a lot of concerns about the Nokia N81's durability. First of all was the noticeable creak that we detected from the phone. Second up is the all plastic construction that doesn't inspire confidence in how the handset will stand up to to a drop or scratches. Last up is the slider design, we're always concerned about a phone with moving parts. On top of all that the 2-Megapixel camera is completely unprotected and some of the seams on the device seemed overly large. We would definitely be concerned about how well the Nokia N81 stands up to serious use.

[page title="Audio Quality"]

Because the audio quality of your phone calls is so important we use the same professional grade equipment and software to test it that many manufacturers also use. To simulate the human head and ear we use a Head and Torso Simulator and to analyze the quality of the audio we use Listen Inc's SoundCheck software. For more information on how we test see this article.

Sound Receive Frequency Response (8.73)
The chart above shows the quality of audio received by the Nokia N81. This is how others on the call will sound to you. The blue line indicates the Nokia N81's performance while the two red lines are the limits we test against. As you can see the Nokia N81 falls completely within our limits in this test. There is some variance within the limits, but nothing that will cause serious problems. The audio quality you receive on the Nokia N81 should be very good.

Cell Phone	Nokia N81 8GB	Nokia N95 w/ US 3G (Unlocked)	Sidekick LX (on T-Mobile)
Score	8.73	7.90	6.74
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	BlackBerry Pearl 8130 (on Verizon)	T-Mobile Shadow (on T-Mobile)	LG Venus (on Verizon)
Score	9.28	5.68	7.78
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Sound Send Frequency Response (7.65)
In this test we look at the quality of audio sent by the phone, so this is how you will sound to others. As with our receive test the graph above indicates the N81's performance with a blue line and our limits with red lines. You can see that the Nokia N81's performance in this test is not as good as the previous one. The curve rises above our limits at the lower frequencies and then falls off a little too quickly at lower frequencies. The deviations are minor, however, and should not effect users too much. Listeners may notice a boomier sound at the lower frequencies and a high pitched voice may sound clipped, but the deviations aren't enough to produce serious problems. You can see below that the Nokia N81 still put up a pretty decent score.

Cell Phone	Nokia N81 8GB	Nokia N95 w/ US 3G (Unlocked)	Sidekick LX (on T-Mobile)
Score	7.65	6.51	5.35
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	BlackBerry Pearl 8130 (on Verizon)	T-Mobile Shadow (on T-Mobile)	LG Venus (on Verizon)
Score	8.66	6.40	7.24
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Handset Side Tone (6.85)
Side tone is the small amount of your own voice that is piped back into your ear so you can judge how loudly you are speaking. Our ideal for side tone is -18 decibels so the Nokia N81's score of -21.15 decibels is a little lower than we would like. What this means is your voice may not sound loud enough to you, causing you to speak more loudly. If anyone on the other end of the call complains about the volume of your voice while using the N81, this is probably the reason. You can see from the table below that the Nokia N81 did nor perform very well in this test compared to other phones.

Cell Phone	Side Tone Measurement	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	21.15	6.85
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	19.61	8.19
Sidekick LX	19.74	8.26
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	20.55	7.45
T-Mobile Shadow	12.64	4.64
LG Venus	18.98	9.02

[page title="Imaging"]

Resolution (1.16)
To test the resolution of photos captured by the Nokia N81's camera we take photographs of an industry standard resolution chart and then use Imatest software to analyze them. Imatest produces a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph) that measures how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together.
The Nokia N81 scored 511 lw/ph horizontal and 534 lw/ph vertical, which is a pretty poor score. In fact it's amongst the worst scores we've seen from any phone. Nokia is renowned for making high end camera phones including the Nokia N95 that, as you can see below, put up an excellent score in this test. On the other hand it's not that surprising as we've seen poor performance from Nokia's fixed focus 2-Megapixel cameras. The Nokia N75, whose camera has similar specs, also performed very poorly on our imaging tests.

Cell Phone	Nokia N81 8GB	Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	Sidekick LX
Score	1.16	8.16	2.55
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	511/534	1355/1388	782/662
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	BlackBerry Pearl 8130	T-Mobile Shadow	LG Venus
Score	4.27	2.28	2.70
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	980/450	741/746	779.9/740.1
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (3.21)
To test the color fidelity of a phone's camera we take photos of an industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart. These photos are then analyzed by the Imatest software, which compares the captured colors to the original ones.

Above you see the color chart after Imatest has analyzed it, showing the original color and the captured color in each box. To see this more clearly we turn to the chart below, which Imatest also produces. Here the ideal color is marked with a square and the actual captured color with a circle. The longer the line between the two the more inaccurate the color.
You can see that the Nokia N81 did not perform particularly well in our test. Greens, yellows and blues showed serious under-saturation and whits were also widely scattered. As a result the Nokia N81 put up a very poor score in this test, you can see below that it's the worst amongst our comparison phones. So far we are not impressed with the quality of the Nokia N81's camera.

Cell Phone	Nokia N81 8GB	Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	Sidekick LX
Score	3.21	6.84	4.00
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	BlackBerry Pearl 8130	T-Mobile Shadow	LG Venus
Score	5.13	5.61	6.00
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (0.47)
To test how much noise is produced by a camera we take photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at four different lighting levels ranging from bright to very low. We then use Imatest to analyze the amount of noise produced at each lighting level. The Nokia N81 performed just as poorly in this test as it has in our other imaging tests. Not only was noise very high at all lighting levels, but it varied widely between lighting levels. As a result the Nokia N81 has put up one of the worst noise scores we've ever seen. You can see from the scores below that no camera phone performs particularly well in this test, but in the universe of cell phone cameras, the Nokia N81 is a black hole of suckiness.

Cell Phone	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	0.47
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	1.41
Sidekick LX	0.76
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	1.08
T-Mobile Shadow	1.23
LG Venus	0.94

Live Preview (3.0)
The Nokia N81's live preview is not particularly impressive. The layout is similar to that found on all Series 60 (S60) devices, which is good. The whole screen is used as a viewfinder and there are a few controls and indicators overlaid but that don't distract you from your subject. The problem is what you actually see on the screen. The images are very noisy and the photos you take don't look very much like what you had framed on the camera. Colors are also washed out, but we can't punish the N81 too much for that as the final photos are also washed out. It doesn't hold a candle to the excellent live preview we saw from the N95, or even the average ones we saw from the Pearl and Shadow.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (4.44)
In this test we try to see how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have taken a photo. We do this test repeatedly until we get consistent results. The Nokia N81 took 4.5 seconds to take a photo under these conditions. We found that it took awhile for the camera software to launch and then another while for the photo to actually be captured. You can see below that the N95 took significantly longer, but it has the excuse of having an auto-focus lens. The Nokia N81 with its fixed focus lens is better compared to phones like the Pearl and Shadow, both of which did significantly better in this test. That being said, it's not completely terrible, just don't expect to be able to take many spur of the moment shots with the N81.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	4.5	4.44
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	6.5	3.08
Sidekick LX	3.3	6.06
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	3.16	6.33
T-Mobile Shadow	3.2	6.25
LG Venus	4.57	4.38

Shot to Shot Time (2.70)
Shot to shot time measures how quickly you can take a series of photos with the phone's camera. When possible we try to use a phone's burst mode to do this test and the Nokia N81 thankfully has one that takes six photos in rapid succession. We were able to take those six photos in 6.6 seconds, which works out to 0.9 frames per second (fps). This isn't a terrible score, and what makes it even better is that unlike many phones with burst modes the Nokia N81 doesn't take lower resolution photos in burst mode, instead you get full 2-Megapixel shots. You can see below that most of our comparison phones scored under 0.5 fps in this test, so the Nokia N81's higher fps and full sized photos stand up pretty well.

Cell Phone	FPS	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	0.9	2.70
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	0.42	1.26
Sidekick LX	0.21	0.63
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	0.34	1.02
T-Mobile Shadow	1.76	5.28
LG Venus	0.36	1.08

Shutter to Shot Time (11.76)
Shutter to shot time is how long it takes the camera to actually take a photo once you've pressed the capture button. On the Nokia N81 shutter to shot time was very quick and 0.17 seconds. You can see below that's the best score amongst our comparison phones, which did pretty poorly in this test. The N95 has an excuse as it has an auto-focus lens that always takes longer to capture, but the other phones with fixed focus lenses just go schooled.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	0.17	11.76
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	1	1.96
Sidekick LX	1.2	1.67
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	0.48	4.17
T-Mobile Shadow	0.9	2.22
LG Venus	0.82	2.44

Interface (9.0)
The Nokia N81 has the same interface we've seen on other S60 devices. The whole screen is used as a viewfinder with indicators in the top left for camera type and the bottom left for photo size and a counter for how many photos you can capture. On the right side of the scree are the labels for the two soft keys and between them the typical ribbon of shortcuts we find on all S60 devices. Using the D-Pad you can move up and down this ribbon and get quick access to most camera functions. We've always been fond of the S60 camera interface, it's simple but gives you easy access to a plethora of options.

Photo Album Software Internal (7.0)
The Nokia N81's album software is also the same as that found on other N-Series devices. You get a rotating carousel of thumbnails, with the currently selected item enlarged and taking up the center part of the screen. Our biggest problem with previous versions of gallery on S60 devices is that it tended to be slow to load and laggy. Fortunately, this isn't the case on the Nokia N81, which has upgraded RAM over previous S60 devices that speeds things up nicely. This increase in usability combined with a solid selection of options makes gallery on the Nokia N81 a very good piece of album software.

Manual Control (2.0)
The Nokia N81 lacks most manual controls like manual white balance or aperture priority mode. What you do get, however, are a good selection of scene modes like sport and landscape.

Zoom (1.0)
The Nokia N81 has a 20x digital zoom, which is useful sometimes, but really isn't worth much. All digital zoom does is crop and enlarge your scene, which is no different than what you might do with photo editing software.

Focus (0.0)
The Nokia N81 is a fixed focus camera, which means what you see in the scene is what you're going to get. This is in contrast to phones like the N95 that have an auto-focus lens that try to put the scene into focus before you take a photo. We don't award points for fixed focus lenses.

Flash (3.0)
The Nokia N81 has a simple LED flash that really only works out to a range of about three feet.

Metering (2.0)
Unlike some phones that have started to include true metering controls the Nokia N81 lacks these. It does have an exposure compensation control, which is like the brightness control found on many phones. True metering controls allow you to control from which point or points in the scene light is judged.

White Balance (2.0)
The Nokia N81 has a decent selection of white balance presets, as we see on most camera phones. What it lacks is more advanced white balance options you see on real cameras like evaluative white balance mode.

Image Handling (8.0)
Gallery on the Nokia N81 provides some excellent image handling options. You can crop, resize, adjust contrast, fix red eye and a bunch of other options. Most phones offer very few, if any, image handling options so we're very happy to see these on the Nokia N81.

Video

Overall Video Score (7.0)
The Nokia N81 captures video at 320 x 240, which is good quality for a cell phone, albeit not as good as the 640 x 480 video captured by the N95. The Nokia N81's video is good enough to use for Youtube and looks decent, if a little pixelated, on a laptop monitor. We wouldn't play it on a big screen TV though.

Video Resolution (6.72)
To test the resolution of video captured by the Nokia N81 we take video of the same resolution chart we use for the stills camera. We then take frames from this video and run them through Imatest to produce a line widths per pixel height (lw/ph) score, which tells us how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together. The Nokia N81 performed well on this test, not as good as the Nokia N95, as you would expect, but still better than any of our other comparison phones.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	247/272	6.72
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	336.5/428.1	14.17
Sidekick LX	n/a - no video capture	0.00
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	171/190	3.25
T-Mobile Shadow	155/168	2.59
LG Venus	237/247	5.85

Video Compression (4.0)
The Nokia N81 captures video in either Mpeg-4 or 3GP formats. Mpeg-4 is used at the highest capture settings while 3GP is used for lower quality settings including MMS video. We like having the option between the two formats, most phones limit you to a single format.

Interface (8.0)
The camcorder interface on the Nokia N81 is very similar to the stills camera. The whole screen is again used for the viewfinder with icons on screen showing you what mode you're in and how long you can record video. On the right side you have another ribbon of icons for quick control, although there are fewer options available for the video camera. We like it just as much as the stills camera interface.

Manual Control (0.0)
The Nokia N81 doesn't offer any manual controls for video capture.

Zoom (0.0)
As with the stills camera you have a digital zoom for video capture on the Nokia N81. As we stated above this is of limited utility, and the problems are even greater for video capture since the starting resolution of video is so much lower than stills.

Editing (6.0)
The editing options for videos on the Nokia N81 aren't as good as the stills options, but are still significantly better than what most phones offer. You can merge multiple videos, add a soundtrack or text and cut the video to remove sections you don't want.

Modes (4.0)
The Nokia N81's camcorder offers a mode for shooting at night and also allows you to set the quality lower specifically for MMS video.

[page title="Making/Receiving Calls"]

Dialing Speed (6.58)
To see how easy it is to dial a number on the Nokia N81 we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have dialed each of five phone numbers. We were able to dial a number on the Nokia N81 in an average of 3.04 seconds, which is a pretty good time. You can see below that only the Pearl beat that time amongst our comparison phones. We're actually a little surprised by this as we had some concerns about the Nokia N81's keypad and controls. Our fingers constantly bumped up against the lip of the upper part of the slider when using the top row of the keypad and we don't like the lack of differentiation between the send key and surrounding buttons, as we discuss below. Despite those concerns, though, it was very quick and easy to make a call on the Nokia N81.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	3.04	6.58
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	4.62	4.33
Sidekick LX	4.2	4.76
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	2.71	7.38
T-Mobile Shadow	3.44	5.81
LG Venus	2.64	7.58

Talk and End Buttons (3.0)
The talk and end buttons on the Nokia N81 are located to the far right and left of the control keys that surround the D-Pad. Frankly we find the plethora of buttons on the Nokia N81 to be a little distracting; it might take a while to learn the layout. While the talk and end keys aren't differentiated from surrounding buttons, they are located near the edge of the handset, which will aid in navigation by feel. Key travel and tactile feedback is a little funny, because the whole piece of plastic on which they sit moves rather than just the button itself. A clear creak is emitted when they are pressed, which we guess is some feedback, but not the kind we like to have. We also found that it was very easy to hit the surrounding buttons by accident. Point is: not good.

Call Management (8.0)
The Nokia N81 provides a very good selection of call management features. The call history includes filter to see just your dialed, received, and missed calls. There are also call timers available. During a call the left soft key is assigned to speakerphone while the right one opens a menu with additional options like mute. All other features on the phone are available, as you would expect from a multi-tasking device. About the only thing we're missing is the ability to record phone calls.

Startup to Call (2.96)
Like most smart phones the Nokia N81 takes awhile to start up and make a call if you turn it off completely, 33.8 seconds to be exact. You can see below that it's not quite as bad as the Sidekick LX or T-Mobile Shadow, but nowhere near as quick as the BlackBerry Pearl. Most regular phones only take between fifteen and twenty-five seconds to start up and make a call.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	33.8	2.96
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	36.4	2.75
Sidekick LX	56.54	1.77
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	6.21	16.10
T-Mobile Shadow	78.36	1.28
LG Venus	25.11	3.98

Ring Volume (9.61)
We measured the Nokia N81 ring volume at 96.1 decibels. To get this measurement we turn the volume up to maximum and then run through all the ring tones on the device using a sound pressure meter to gauge loudness. Although not quite as loud as the Nokia N95, you can see that it's still quite a bit louder than most of our comparison devices, which generally fall into the 80-90 decibel range.

Cell Phone	Volume (decibels)	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	96.1	9.61
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	105.3	10.53
Sidekick LX	84.5	8.45
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	85	8.50
T-Mobile Shadow	85.4	8.54
LG Venus	85.8	8.58

Ringtone Customizability (8.0)
As with other N-Series phones we've reviewed the Nokia N81 allows you to use any Mp3, AAC or WMA music file on your phone as a ring tone. You can also use voice recordings as ring tones.

Non Audio Alerts (10.0)
The vibrate on the Nokia N81 is decent, but not good enough to feel in jacket pocket. If it's in your pants you should be fine. We also like the Series 60 feature that makes your screen blink when a call comes in, this makes it much more noticeable if you're not looking straight at it.

[page title="Messaging"]

Supported Email Services (6.0)
The Nokia N81 supports standard IMAP and POP email accounts, however it won't automatically configure popular email services like Gmail, Yahoo or AOL. Instead you'll have to find your server settings and set them up yourself.

Push Email (0.0)
The Nokia N81 doesn't support push email out of the box, but you can download and install various push email software that will allow the N81 to work with services like Exchange or BlackBerry servers.

Multiple Email Accounts (10.0)
The Nokia N81 supports at least five different email account, which is all we look for.

HTML and Attachements (1.0)
The Nokia N81 handles HTML email the same way any other Series 60 device does, poorly. The email itself is going to look ugly with HTML converted to plain text, but there will be a link in there that will open a web page where you can read the email in HTML format. We don't think much of this solution, why can't Series 60 devices display true HTML email like Windows Mobile 6 devices or the iPhone?

We also found the attachment support on the Nokia N81 to be pretty poor. Almost every other Series 60 device we've seen includes Quickoffice for viewing Word, Excel and Powerpoint attachments, but for some reason the Nokia N81 lacks this software. Adobe's PDF software is on the device, but we don't know why they would take their next generation device and remove functionality that's on older S60 phones.

Email Customizations (2.0)
Like other N-Series devices we've seen the Nokia N81's only email customization feature is the ability to add signatures to emails.

Time to a New Message (8.0)
We were able to get a new email dialogue on screen starting from the home screen in 2.5 seconds on the Nokia N81. This is a very good time, albeit not as good as the BlackBerry Pearl. It's very good compared to other S60 devices we've reviewed, you can see that even the latest version of the N95 took over four seconds to complete this process. We found that on the Nokia N81 we didn't have to wait for lag at all, and with the messaging application assigned to the left soft key on the home screen we were just four button presses away from a new email.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	2.5	8.00
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	4.4	4.55
Sidekick LX	2.22	9.01
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	1.22	16.39
T-Mobile Shadow	4.2	4.76
LG Venus	n/a - no email client	0.00

Email Usability (6.0)
Email accounts on the Nokia N81 each have their own folder for incoming messages with shared folders for sent messages, drafts, trash, etc. When you first enter the messaging application you see a list of folders, when you enter one you can switch to other folders using left/right on the D-pad. This is a nice implementation somewhat reminiscent of Windows Mobile devices, although they switch the entire account rather than just the folder. Creating a message is a little more basic, with fields for To/Cc/Bcc, subject and body. The email client is just fine if you're only doing basic email but if you're a power messenger you'll probably find yourself pining yourself for the more elegant and easy interfaces found on Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices.

Supported IM Services (0.0)
The Nokia N81 doesn't support IM out of the box, instead you'll have to go find a third party solution.

MMS Support (7.0)
MMS is well integrate on the Nokia N81. Both SMS and MMS messages are handled by the same inbox, although there are two different interfaces for composing messages. Integration with the camera and album software is very good, making it easy to send messages from either.

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
Those who love smileys will continue to curse S60 devices as the Nokia N81 doesn't interpret text smiley faces as their graphical equivalents, and doesn't make it easy to insert smileys either.

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (6.0)
The SMS/MMS interface is basically the same as that for email. In messaging you have a set of folders including a unified inbox for all SMS/MMS messages. When you compose an SMS message you have one field for the people your sending it to and another for the body. There is a counter to let you know how many of your 160 characters have been used up. With MMS you basically have the same interface except the left soft key menu allows you to insert a multimedia item.

Time to a New SMS Message (11.11)
Creating a new text message on the Nokia N81 is a very quick and easy process. From the home screen just press right to navigate to the new SMS shortcut, then press in. We were able to accomplish this in only .9 seconds, an excellent time that was only matched amongst our comparison phones by the Nokia N95, which has the same shortcut.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	0.9	11.11
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	0.9	11.11
Sidekick LX	1.86	5.38
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	4.78	2.09
T-Mobile Shadow	1.98	5.05
LG Venus	3.36	2.98

[page title="Organizer"]

Synchronization Ease of Use (6.67)
As with other S60 devices the Nokia N81 uses Nokia's PC Suite software to synchronize with your desktop PC. The software has had a couple of recent update that, although minor, do improve usability a little. Setup is straightforward, just install the software on your computer, connect your device via USB for the first sync and then set up the items you want to synchronize.

PC Suite allows you to synchronize all the information you might want including contacts, notes, tasks and calendar appointments. Contact photos are also synchronized and after the first setup you can choose to sync via USB cable or Bluetooth. PC Suite supports synchronization with Outlook or Lotus Notes on a PC. On a Mac you can use Apple's iSync software to synchronize contacts, calendar and tasks, but only via Bluetooth.

Alerts (5.0)
Alerts on the Nokia N81 are similar to those found on all S60 devices. You can set alerts for appointments or tasks. The alert can be set to go off at any time that you wish, flexibility we appreciate. You can't choose which sound will go off for each item, instead your active profile will determine that. When an alert goes off the screen flashes and you see information on screen with the name and time of the item. You can dismiss or snooze the alert. If you choose the latter it will sound again in five minutes. A missed alert will automatically go into snooze mode after one minute.

Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
The Nokia N81 does not support synchronization of your personal information over the air out of the box. There is software available from Nokia that is meant for their E-Series business devices that will allow you to sync wirelessly with an Exchange Server, but as this is not installed on the device we won't award any points for it.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (6.04)
It took an average of 16.56 seconds to add a new contact to the Nokia N81. This is a pretty good time, you can see below that only the BlackBerry Pearl and Venus did slightly better than the Nokia N81 while several other phones did significantly worse, including the Nokia N95. To get our score we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have added a contact name and phone number. We do this for five different test contacts and take the average.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	16.56	6.04
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	25.42	3.93
Sidekick LX	19.58	5.11
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	14.85	6.73
T-Mobile Shadow	21.88	4.57
LG Venus	14.38	6.95

Looking/Sorting/Search (3.5)
The Nokia N81 allows you to sort your contacts by last name, first name or group. Search is only available via multi-tap on the keypad. This is disappointing as we hoped that the upgrades that have come to S60 lately might have included predictive search through contacts. Windows Mobile supports this, why can't S60?

Fields (13.6)
Like all S60 devices the Nokia N81 supports a wide range of contact fields. You have eleven fields when you first create a contact and have the additional option of adding any of 43 additional fields or a contact photo from the menu. This includes a very comprehensive set of fields, more than you'll find on most phones, and if any of those aren't enough you can change the name of any field to fit your needs.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (3.0)
The Nokia N81 supports speed dial for contacts and also supports a voice dialing system. Unfortunately the latter is pretty poor, it was only able to recognize one of our five test contacts, which have diverse names. This makes it even more disappointing that trainable voice tags are not supported.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (5.21)
It took us an average of 19.2 seconds to add a lunch appointment to the Nokia N81 for the following day. This was timed starting at the home screen and ended when we had added our appointment with a reminder fifteen minutes beforehand. The Nokia N81's time in this test wasn't very impressive. You can see below that it's actually the worst time amongst our comparison phones, followed closely by the Nokia N95. We find that S60 phones are often slower than we would like because they don't add a reminder automatically. Instead we have to activate the option manually.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	19.2	5.21
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	18.64	5.36
Sidekick LX	12.44	8.04
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	6.61	15.13
T-Mobile Shadow	9.46	10.57
LG Venus	18.87	5.30

Calendar Views (4.22)
The Nokia N81 offers three different views, month, week and daily. The month view shows you the current month with a small triangle in the corner of every day that has an appointment. Unlike many month views that stop there the Nokia N81's helpfully gives you a small pop up listing all the appointment for that day when it is first selected. This makes it much more useful than the month view on other phones we've reviewed.
The week view is a standard grid with days along the top and hours on the left. Just like the month view you get a helpful little pop up when you select a block of time that has an appointment in it. The daily view is probably the easiest to use and where people will spend most of their time. It is a simple list of appointments for that day with the time, title and indicators for things like an alert. Unfortunately the calendar doesn't support categories so there's no way to filter your views. Despite this last bit, we found the calendar views on the Nokia N81 to be very useful and easy to use.

Fields (6.0)
When you create an appointment on the Nokia N81 you have a fairly basic set of fields to choose from. Title, location, start/end time, an alarm, recurrence are all on board. The alarm is very good because you can set it to go off at any time you wish. The recurrence options are not as good as you have to choose from a certain set of presets. This is not as good as Windows Mobile or BlackBerry devices that allow you to create complex recurrence patterns. We're also disappointed that advanced fields like categories and invitations are not supported.

ToDo/Tasks

Adding ToDo/Task (7.58)
It took 13.2 seconds to add a new task to the Nokia N81. As you can see below this is pretty typical, with all of our comparison devices within a second of the N81's score. With S60 devices tasks are handled by the calendar program. Starting at the home screen we scroll down to the calendar plugin, which takes us to today's appointments. We then scroll right to move to the next day, hit the left soft key to open the menu and choose to add a new task. Our task consists of a reminder to get groceries. We do this five times and take the average for our final score.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	13.20	7.58
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	12.38	8.08
Sidekick LX	14.30	6.99
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	14.19	7.05
T-Mobile Shadow	14.62	6.84
LG Venus	n/a - no tasks	0.00

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (3.5)
Tasks on the Nokia N81 can be prioritized but they can't be sorted by priority. They also don't support categories so there's no way to filter your list of tasks.

Fields (5.0)
When creating a new task on the Nokia N81 the available fields are very basic. You have title, due date, alarm, description/note and priority. There's no support for categories or recurrence.

Notes

Adding Notes (3.36)
It took us an average of 14.9 seconds to add a new note to the Nokia N81, starting from the home screen and ending when our test note was created. We did this five times and took the average for our final score. This is not a very impressive time, you can see below that the Sidekick LX and BlackBerry Pearl 8130 both did significantly better. On the other hand we also had several of our comparison phones that did just as bad or worse, but company in failure does not mitigate it. The Nokia N81 was hurt in this test by the fact that the notes application is buried in the menu system, and even using keypad shortcuts it took us awhile to get the program launched. Once there typing out the note on the keypad just isn't as fast as the QWERTY keyboards on the Pearl or Sidekick.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	14.9	3.36
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	17.7	2.82
Sidekick LX	8.28	6.04
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	9.25	5.41
T-Mobile Shadow	14.76	3.39
LG Venus	18.86	2.65

Note Interface (2.0)
The notes interface on the Nokia N81 is exceedingly simple. You have a simple list of notes with the newest one at the top of the list. The time the note was created is indicated on the left and the first twelve or so characters are shown so you can try to figure out what's in the note. Unfortunately there are no options to categorize, filter or otherwise sort your notes. You also can't search through them, as you can on BlackBerry devices. Unimpressive would be our thought here.

Note Formatting (0.0)
The Nokia N81 doesn't offer any options to format notes by adding things like media, changing font type or size or other effects like underline, italics or bold.

Voice Memo (3.0)
The voice recorder on the Nokia N81 is the same one we've seen on all S60 devices we've reviewed, which isn't good. The voice note is limited to one minute in length and you'll need to switch to the gallery to manage your voice notes rather than having one program handle all the functions. You can send notes via MMS or Bluetooth and upload them to the web as well as make simple edits like change the name of the last created note. If all you want to do is take a quick voice memo this will do the job, but if you want to use your phone as a serious recording device you better go get some third party software.

[page title="Multimedia"]

Accessing Music Software (7.14)
Getting music going on the Nokia N81 was pretty simple. We just had to tap the left soft key on the home screen, hit the center select key a couple of times and voila! We had music in only 2.8 seconds. This is a pretty good time, far better than what we saw on the Nokia N95 and almost as good as the Sidekick LX. You do have multiple entry points for your music if you want to assign the right soft key on the home screen to another function. When music is playing a plugin is added to the home screen that allows you to see what's playing and quickly jump to the music player. The multimedia menu interface also has a music tab that allows you to see what's playing and interact with your library. Neither of these are as fast as having the soft key assigned on the home screen, though.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	2.8	7.14
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	11.82	1.69
Sidekick LX	2.46	8.13
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	6.13	3.26
T-Mobile Shadow	4.9	4.08
LG Venus	3.62	5.52

Dedicated Music Controls (11.0)
The Nokia N81 has four music specific controls that surround the D-Pad and only light up when you have music playing. These controls are play/pause, stop, next/fast forward and previous/rewind. The latter two will skip between songs when pressed once or scan through songs when you hold them down. We found the controls to be a little small and fiddly. They suffer from the same lack of differentiation, poor feedback and key travel that many of the button on the N81 do. We're glad to see the effort made to make the Nokia N81 a more music friendly device, though.
In addition to those controls a plugin is added to your home screen when music is playing that allows you to view what's playing and quickly jump to the music player. You can also always tap on the multimedia button, which takes you to a system of rotating menus for accessing various multimedia oriented functions. When the key is pressed you are always taken to the music menu first. The volume keys on the Nokia N81 also control music volume whenever it's playing and wherever in the interface you are.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (8.8)
The Nokia N81 music software is the same as we've seen on all our other S60 devices, and that's just fine because it's very good software. Playlists are supported, and you can edit or create them on the device. Tags were supported for all three of our standard file types, WMA, AAC and Mp3. The music library allows you to sort your music by title, playlist, artist, album, genre or composer. There's also a search feature that allows you to quickly find the music you want. What you can't do, unfortunately, is rate music on the device. Album art is supported, but only if it's embedded in the file. The music library is automatically updated with all music files found on your phone and music can be played in the background. There's also an equalizer with a variety of presets and the ability to create your own. All in all its some of the best music software we've see on a mobile device, and that includes the iPhone.

Online Song Downloading (0.0)
Nokia has just recently announced that they will be making available an online music store to compete with those offered by carriers. Unfortunately the store is not yet open in the U.S. so we were not able to test it. As such the Nokia N81 will receive a zero in this section as we only Nokia N81 8GBs based on their capabilities at the time of the review. Readers should note that the store may be active by the time they read this review.

Streaming (0.0)
As with all other S60 devices we've seen the Nokia N81 doesn't support streaming audio from the internet. For this test we attempt to stream Mp3, AAC and Real audio, and the Nokia N81 failed at all three.

Podcast Support (7.0)
We've raved about Nokia's podcast software for awhile now and always regretted the fact that we had to give their devices a zero in this section because the software was not loaded on their phones by default. We are very happy to see, therefore, that the Nokia N81 is the first S60 device that has excellent podcasting software integrated right onto their already excellent music software. This podcast software allows you to subscribe to podcasts, set the phone to automatically update them on a schedule and creates one simple place to go for this content. There is also a library of podcasts that you can browse, but we do wish that the software better integrated with podcast feeds we find using the web browser. Despite this small niggle we are not only happy to give the Nokia N81 points in this section, we're happy to give the device a good score for good software.

Music Sync with PC (7.0)
You can synchronize your music between a Nokia N81 and a PC using either Nokia's PC Suite software or simply by using Windows Media Player, our preferred solution.

Music Formats and DRM (4.0)
The Nokia N81 supports Mp3, AAC and WMA files. It also supports Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM, which we hope soon dies the same death that all DRM should die. That aside it does allow you to use the Nokia N81 with music purchased from compatible stores like Rhapsody, Napster and (someday) Nokia's own store, all of which use PlaysForSure (or Certified for Windows Vista as it has recently been rebranded, curiously enough).

Music Interruption (10.0)
The Nokia N81 handles interruption to music playback like a champ, pausing the music when the call comes in and starting up again when the call ends.

Video

Video Software Access (3.45)
We were able to get a video playing on the Nokia N81 in just 5.8 seconds. This is the time it took us to go from the home screen unlocked until we had a video playing. This is not a great time, but it's ok. You can see below that a lot of our comparison phones also did poorly in this section, with the Nokia N81 putting up the best score amongst the bunch.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia N81 8GB	5.8	3.45
Nokia N95 w/ US 3G	10.22	1.96
Sidekick LX	n/a - no video playback	0.00
BlackBerry Pearl 8130	6.98	2.87
T-Mobile Shadow	8.92	2.24
LG Venus	9.12	2.19

Video Controls (4.0)
Like other S60 devices the Nokia N81 uses Realplayer for video playback. This is not good, and you can see that based on the video controls. The center select key acts as a play/pause, which makes us wonder why the left soft key does the same thing. On top of that the right soft key is assigned to stop, which is not a very useful function. Holding down on the up/down keys will fast forward or rewind, the volume keys do their thing but for some reason left/right doesn't do a thing. We found the controls confusing, redundant, and annoyingly unable to be customized.

Video Software & Organization (1.0)
Realplayer on the Nokia N81, and all S60 devices for that matter, is one of the poorest excuses for video software we've seen on any smart phone. All the software does is play back video, and it doesn't even do that well. As we discussed above the controls are confusing, but on top of that there's no way to organize your videos with Realplayer. There is no library, instead you will need to find videos using a file browser interface or launch them from the Gallery. Either way you can forget about things like organizing by video type, playlist support, and search. About the only thing it can do that we appreciate is play video in full screen landscape orientation. If you want to do some serious video watching on the Nokia N81 we recommend you go out and get a third party solution like Coreplayer.

Video Sync with PC (7.0)
You can synchronize videos with the Nokia N81 just as easily as you can music, either using PC Suite or more easily by using Windows Media Player. Forget about synchronizing playlists though as there's no software on the Nokia N81 to support video playlists.

Video Formats (6.0)
The Nokia N81 was able to handle all of our test 3GP videos, vanilla Mpeg-4 files, H264 encoded files and Real video. It wasn't able to handle Quicktime, Windows Media Video, or Flash.

Video DRM (0.0)
Despite its solid support for various video types the Nokia N81 does not support any form of video DRM. Given Nokia's seeming love of Microsoft's DRM standard we don't think it would be asking too much for the N81 to support their video DRM so you could watch videos purchased from Amazon's Unboxed store.

Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
We were pleased to see that the Nokia N81 was able to play back all five of our test video files, which we encode at a variety of bitrates ranging from very low to high quality.

Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The Nokia N81 doesn't support any premium direct video download services. Nokia does offer a few links to some videos on its website, but there's no marketplace for video downloads like iTunes or Amazon offers on your computer.

Video Streaming unscored
We don't score this section because there really aren't any standards for streaming video to mobile devices yet. We do test a few sites for informational purposes, however. We were pleased to see that the Nokia N81 supported streaming 3GP video from both Zoovision.com and Youtube Mobile. It didn't support streaming Windows Media Video from windowsmedia.com.

[page title="Software"]

OS (8.0)
The Nokia N81 runs the Symbian operating system with Nokia's Series 60 (S60) interface. This is a powerful smart phone operating system and the most widely used world wide, despite not being very popular in the US. S60 has its bad points, we find that the menus tend to be large and ungainly and on many devices it tends to be somewhat slow. We're happy to see that the latter issue has been addressed on the Nokia N81, even if the former has not.

For the third time in as many years Nokia has decided that the multimedia menu needs a revamp, this time deciding on a rotating set of "tiles", each of which is a small menu giving you access to certain key features of various programs. These include music, games, gallery, contacts, internet and maps. We appreciate that Nokia has gone to the effort