Nokia N81 - reviewed and slaughtered
By Joe • Nov 10th, 2007 • Category: All Articles
Om recently received a Nokia N81 directly from the Fin giant for a pre-release review, but sadly it disappoints on many levels. This $550 music-phone, with 8 GB of built-in storage is part of Nokia’s big push into the music-related biz, and is one of the most highly anticipated phones of the season.
The device behaved like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum. Unless this is an especially buggy device, N81 has to be one of the worst Nokia phones I have ever used and would be loathe to recommend it to anyone.
It is underpowered and the Symbian S60 OS behaves like Windows ME. Remember that piece of junk? Well this is worse. It takes more than 10 seconds to open a text message. Switching between applications is akin to me running — out of breath. One has to constantly reboot the phone to even make phone calls.
The phone did do well in music quality, the buttons are easy to use and type on, and it is easily synced with a Mac (although it took Om 4 hours to transfer 8GB of music). Another aspect where the phone did shine was the build-quality and finish. Good try Nokia, next time, try harder.
Read [GigaOm] [also posted on Gadgetell]
