The Ultimate Phone, the Nokia N81

The Nokia N81 is a true multimedia device that looks to challenge Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung for the top title of best multimedia mobile device. On paper the Nokia N81 does not disappoint, whether it can live up to the reputation of its big brother, the N95 is a different matter. Time will tell, but sales so far have been very encouraging.

Nokia introduced the N81 to compete in the younger generational mobile phone market. Whilst businessmen want to be able to sync their device with outlook, word and excel, as well as navigate the traffic on their mobile phone, the younger generation want to play games and listen to their music on their mobile phone. The Nokia N81 attempts to satisfy these demands by offering this sort of functionality.

The Nokia N81 is a 3g mobile phone. This means that it can download music and short films very quickly. It is anticipated that this feature will become even more useful in the latter part of 2008 as Nokia releases it's very own music platform, providing access to thousands of tunes as long as you own a Nokia mobile phone. Currently the N81 is only available in black, however this is likely to change as the mobile giant looks to extend the product lifecycle of this multimedia device.

The battery on the N81 is better than its older brother the N95. Standby time is approximately 408 hours, with talk time at an impressive 4 hours in GSM mode (slightly shorter when talking on the 3G network). The music playback time is also impressive at 11.5 hours, although it is not quite as good as a standalone mp3 player.

Where this phone really stands out is in the gaming capabilities. It has 2 dedicated buttons, entirely for gaming and this helps it beat all the competition in this area. The success of the Nokia N81 will depend on whether or not it can get a good catalogue of games to support it.