Nokia N81

Weaknesses

Unfortunately, the N81 is not without its niggles. One of the features that should have made it a real standout among music phones has turned out to be a big disappointment. You see, the N81's directional pad also doubles as an iPod-style touch wheel. This sounds like a fantastic idea, but in practice the wheel is barely useable as it's just not responsive enough. Nokia must have realized this as it has turned it off by default.

The phone is also quite large and heavy. Its dimensions roughly match those of the N95, but even though the N81 has less features than its older sibling, it's actually considerably heavier, tipping the scales at a bone crunching 140g.

We would have liked to see a slightly better camera too. Other phones in the Nseries have 3 and 5-megapixel cameras, but the N81 is saddled with a pretty pedestrian 2-megapixel snapper. Also, although the battery life is generally decent--you'll get around four hours of talk time from it--if you really hammer the Wi-Fi connection and make heavy use of the music and video player, it quickly runs out of juice.

Performance

The N81 is an impressive phone, but it's not really the revolutionary handset that many people were expecting. It has great music features and looks like it could become a seriously good games machine given the right software support, but it's marred slightly by the poor touch wheel and chunky dimensions.

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