Nokia N81 8GB Cell Phone Review - Messaging
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Alfredo Padilla Published on December 27, 2007 Comment on this |
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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)
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)
| 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 |
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