Nokia N81 8GB - Part I - Q&A
I’ve been playing with the N81 8GB more over the past few days, and have also had a chance to address some of the questions asked in the other thread. I’ve also got a video coming shortly showing off some specific functions.
However, I wanted to answer some of your questions, as well as point out some of my own findings. I’ll start with the questions, and will be doing several more "parts" of this review, with each having a specific focus. Stay tuned for more……
1. What is my first impression of the battery? Remember the N73?
Yeah, it’s that good. Seriously. On one charge, I started at 9am, was
able to hit it till about 3pm the next day. In that time I had:
Jaiku Mobile running in the background from 9a to 1230p the next day.
Music for ~4 hours
GPS (via BT) for ~2 hours
~2 hours of additional EDGE usage
several pictures
~1 hour of phone calls
~15-20 SMS.
Oh, and the first thing I do with new phones is turn the screen
brightness all the way up, activate BT, turn the backlight timer to 30
seconds, and put the Packet Data as "When Available". So I typically
suck up the battery quite nicely.
2. Is the camera that bad? For a 2MP, no, it’s not. But that’s just
it. It’s 2MP. On an Nseries device. That kills me. I’ll do some
video/picture examples in another post.
3. How many languages are available for assisted writing in T9? Dansk, English, Suomi, islenska, Norsk, Svenska. Hope one of those is what you were hoping for.
4. No Pencil key? No, you now use a combination of the * and #
keys. The * key activates T9, changes the language, etc. The # key is
used to highlight, as well as copy/paste. There’s also a new menu
option, "Editing Options" which contains Cut, Copy, and Paste. It’s
actually very usable, and not as painful as you’d think. And hey, it
eliminated an entire button, which on this device, is a good thing.
5. Multitasking prowess? Killer. I can have all sort of things open
without worrying about it. I’m still working on testing this, as I’m
still used to closing apps when I’m done with them, lol.
6. What’s my feelings on the keys? Will they hold up to grueling gaming sessions? Personally, I think they will. They creak - alot, as has been noted elsewhere, but they’re very sturdy (in fact, the d-pad is a bit too sturdy for my tastes), but I think that will help prevent them from wearing out.
Thanks a lot for this first impression and for answering my questions.
Since they increased a lot the memory for storage I was curious about the number of languages included. I’m afraid it’ll be difficult for me to find a language pack with both italian and svenska (swedish).
Another interesting point is the transfer rate when the phone is connected as mass storage. I’ve recently seen a screenshot showing an average speed of 0.5MB/s over 512MB file transfer (mostly mp3s), a lot worse than iPod nano G1 which is scores 2.5MB/s.
The italian TIM offers the N81 for 400€ and the N81 8GB for 500€ (SIM free) but the N95-2 costs 600€ and since I’m not really into gaming…
Looks like you’ve got a Nordic firmware version where all those languages are included: English, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic. For other regions, there are other language combinations for assisted writing in T9.