Nokia N81 Review
Via:AllAboutSymbian.com (Ewan Spense)
Part 1- The hardware, the naviwheel, the carousel
The N81 8GB, Nokia’s latest Nseries music phone, at first sight, looks aggressive. A moulded black casing that shines like Darth Vader after a waxing; harsh gunmetal encircling the device; the glowing white keys reminiscent of a pulp Doomsday machine. Put them all together and you realise that this device means business. We’re sitting on 8GB of storage space on this device. There’s onboard wi-fi and high speed (3G) data to stay connected. The software includes the updated music and podcast applications; the interface into the N-Gage Gaming System is here; as are the social networking/Ovi application panes (a.k.a. multimedia menu).
The N81 comes with the standard Nokia 2 megapixel camera and plastic lens. It’s a similar camera to that on the E61i, and follows the same specs as the previous ‘music phone’, the N91. We’re also missing the GPS that the N95 carries, and our review unit didn’t feature Quickoffice viewers.
One of the good losses on the N81 keypad is the ‘pencil’ key. This depreciation reduces the keys on any device and makes it less scary. Congrats to whoever got this on board for the Nseries range – it’s already been done on mid-range S60 devices (such as the 6290); it reduces the build cost on the device (one less switch) and it makes it clearer how to do things for the end users.
The newest innovation is around the square d-pad. By this I don’t mean the very welcome direct keys for music playback, but in the ‘naviwheel’ (scroll wheel). Which doesn’t actually scroll, and isn’t a wheel, so should get round any legal niceties when compared to an iPod. It’s a good addition to the UI, and allows you to work through a long list of musical tracks with ease by running your thumb or finger around the silver cursor ring to control the on screen selector.
Read the complete part 1 of the review here
Part 2 - Listening To The Music
Search versus Scroll: The addition of the naviwheel (or perhaps it should be called the ’scroll wheel square with funky web 2.0 rounded corners’?) is a good thing as storage space increases. I’ve spoken about the naviwheel issues in part one of this review, and there is a knack to being accurate especially when browsing music. You’ve got to be running around just the right section of the raised pad to make it ‘spin’ and I found that for moving just a couple of lines it was not quite sensitive enough. The addition of the naviwheel has significantly enhanced the music experience compared to other Nseries devices. Scroll and search put together make the N81 well suited to music on the move.
Controlling the music: The N81 has two ways to control the music that’s playing - the first is the regular playback controls using the cursors - play/pause is the center keys, forward and back are left and right, with down as stop (the same on pretty much every device) and, thanks to the raised naviwheel, these are easy to find and press when the device is in your pocket. That of course assumes you’re still in the music app, so Nokia also have a set of global playback keys that will work from any application. Again the four regular controls of play/pause, stop, forward and back, and they can be found just outside the naviwheel even by touch.
Listening to Music: A few things on actually listening to the music. One of the biggest improvements compared to my current Nseries, the N95, is a physical one. The 3.5mm stereo jack plug has moved from the left side of the unit to top center on the N81; with this small touch the usability of the phone as a media player is greatly improved. The sound quality put out by the N81 is fractionally better than the N95 – at least to my ears. I also think there is an improvement over the previous music focused Nseries - the N91. On the N81 there is a touch more richness to the treble and the bass is a lot crisper. No doubt in due course we’re going to see some spectrographic tests emerge, but to me, there’s no argument to be made that you’re compromising on audio quality in the hardware.
Getting Music on the Phone: Of course one of the big factors in making any modern music device easy to use is how you get your music collection onto the device, and let’s be honest here, Apple have that sorted, and Nokia still aren’t there yet. You’ve got three main ways to manage this with the N81. Nokia’s Music Manager software for the PC; attaching the N81 as a ‘Media Device’ over USB (Windows Media Transfer Protocol); and attaching it as a generic USB Mass Storage Device.
Let’s start with Nokia’s Music Manger. It’s… cute. It shows a nice list of all your drives on your PC, and also ‘My Collection’ of music that you’ve identified as being on your hard drive. I started by pointing this at the folder on my PC with my MP3 collection, and it collated them into the view. And then I started to hunt for some Deep Purple to copy over, and the fun started.
Conclusion:
As a music device, the Nokia N81 8GB is up there with the best of them. It is a compromise device, but the integration of hardware keys for the main playback functions, alongside the naviwheel functionality, makes moving around your collection easy and quick.It’s fair to say that the N81 wins out as a music phone because of the strengths of the on-device playback, and in spite of the problems and awkwardness of the various desktop-based transfer solutions. Read the complete Part 2 here
Part 3 - Looking Through The Microsoft Music Window
As I pointed out in part 2 of this review, the Nokia Music Manager program isn’t the greatest, and I suspect that, while a number of hardcore users will end up using the USB Mass Storage mode to directly access the N81’s 8GB memory and copy over music files that way, the majority of people are going to use Windows Media Player and the built in ‘synchronising’ capability.
While this isn’t as smooth as Apple’s iTunes, it’s a step up from the Nokia bundled software, and is reasonably smooth in operation, so for that reason alone the inclusion of Windows Media Player support is welcome.
First of all, and the big advantage over the Nokia solution, is that you can search through your music collection with Windows Media Player. Want to see everything by “Queen” in your collection? Drop it into the text box, hit search, and there you go. Putting all of the Queen tracks onto your N81 is now a matter of dragging and dropping the songs from this subset list, into the Sync List on the right of the view.
One of the main reasons to use Windows Media Player is to give you access to the Nokia Music Store – where you’re able to purchase and download music for both your phone and home PC. This has to sit alongside other legal music purchased services. Outside of Apple’s iTunes, the majority of these run Windows Media’s DRM solution, so Nokia are not alone in going down this road.
Conlcusion:
While Windows Media Player support has been around on Nokia devices for a while, the latest version of that platform (v11) has made it a good companion for a mobile device. Put it side by side with the Nokia Music Manager and the difference is so clear that there’s no real choice to make. No more Music Manager for me.
I’d be very interested to know if the store is designed to run at a profit for Nokia, or if it’s a revenue neutral effort along the lines of iTunes, but it certainly adds in the final component to the music devices in the Nseries range. If you’ve got music, you can get it onto your N81. If you want music, then you can buy it from the handset with little fuss. The system works well.
Yes there are flaws, yes you are restricted to using the Microsoft way of doing things, and the DRM can be restrictive if you’re looking to move the music files around between a number of PC’s or burn the tracks to a CD (both of which you can only do a limited number of times), but it’s a big improvement on previous offerings for Nokia music devices. Coupled with the improvements in the Music player itself, this is a definite winner, and is, in my opinion, ready for the consumer market and not just geeks and power users. Read the complete Part 3 here
Part 4 - Podcasting and Visual Radio
Podcast Client:The version of Nokia’s Podcasting application (previously reviewed here) found in the Nokia N81 has received some nice changes compared to the downloadable version available from Nokia.com. The main difference, and one that is of great benefit, is the tighter integration of Podcasting into the music player. Now, when you first open up the music application, you’ll get the choice of jumping to Music or Podcasts. Going to the podcasts brings up a new and very much easier to use menu screen.
It’s very similar in layout to the Music Player, so as well as category-based listings (all episodes, by title, by publish date), there are also ’smart lists’ (automatic playlists) that show recently downloaded podcasts, or podcasts you’ve not listened to. Another notable addition to the application’s functionality is support for pausing and later resumption of a particular podcast (rather than losing your position each time).
Let’s be clear, these basic additions of auto-playlists, along with placing podcasting into the music suite, lifts podcasting up from ‘curiosity‘ to something that will appeal to and be used by mainstream users. As a podcaster myself (so no bias in favour of podcasting whatsoever here! - Rafe), this integration is something that I am very happy to see. It is also great to see that Nokia are, in a similar fashion to in their Music Store, making it easier for people to discover new media from the device itself. With a searchable directory built into the Podcasting application it is possible to browse, find, subscribe, download and listen to shows all from within the Podcasting application. That is something that very few other podcast players can do.
Of course other portable podcast players, including the iPod, do have desktop companions that can do the searching, subscribing and downloading. I would suggest to Nokia that this is the next thing the podcasting team should look at; perhaps in conjunction with the forthcoming Nokia Music Store Windows client. Some sort of synchronisation between mobile and desktop for podcasts would mean that the N81 is suited for everyone to use for listening to podcasts. At the moment, while it’s still easy to use, it has the air of needing a little bit too much hand holding for the regular user (and there’s also the question of data tariffs).
Visualising the FM Radio
While it might seem rather anachronistic to have an FM Radio in the N81, it’s insanely practical while out and about. Those in large cities in the UK with strong local radio are going to be able to get traffic, travel and local news with ease and at very little cost (just battery power). It is also worth remembering that the N81 is a global product and in some markets, such as India, FM radios are considered a must have feature.
Of course it is labelled Visual Radio, so you have the option to go online over your wireless connection to receive extra data and visuals produced by the radio station is available, but it’s not an option that has had widespread support. To be honest, where it is available it adds some value, but it is sporadic and rarely applies to the stations that I listen to.
There’s been no addition or changes to the Radio application from previous devices, which is a shame, given the polish that the podcasting application has received. One feature which I do like is the automatic downloading of local radio stations presets for your area from the Internet. It may be a small thing, but it saves time and hassle. However there is room for improvement, for example it would be nice to see Nokia’s Internet Radio software integrated into this application. As it is, Visual Radio is a welcome application, and it does have a place in the overall multimedia experience, but after the glamour of an on-board Music Store and Podcasting application, it really feels like the friend no-one talks about.
Part 5- Nokia N81 as a gaming machine
The N81 can run Symbian S60 3rd Edition applications and games, Next Gen N-Gage games, J2ME Java games, and emulated retro games through an S60 3rd Edition emulator.
The N81’s horizontal mode and gaming keys are (as far as we’re aware) only accessible to Next Gen N-Gage games, so you have to run S60 and Java games in vertical mode. This wouldn’t be a problem, after all phone games are mostly written for portrait screens anyway. However, the N81 has an annoying flaw which we mentioned earlier: the slider screen wobbles when it’s open. It doesn’t wobble by much, but it’s enough to make this €600 phone feel cheaper than it should, and it is especially frustrating when you’re trying to play games (imagine if a brand new joypad felt like it was coming apart every time you pressed a button). Nokia can and do make solid slider phones, their numbered phone models are good examples of this, but for some reason the Nseries models have a lower build-quality despite generally having a much higher price.
To be honest, the main thing we were hoping to do was tell you how well the N81 runs Next Gen N-Gage games, but we can’t, at least for the moment. Unfortunately the launch of the platform has been delayed to December, so we have no full N-Gage games to judge the N81 by.
The N81 does however allow access to three N-Gage demos, which in theory should give us a flavour of what Next Gen Games will be like, but these are so limited and quirky that it’s difficult to know how well these represent the full games let alone the platform as a whole.
Also, we couldn’t actually get the demos to work at first. We clicked on the N-Gage logo, the "Discover N-Gage" application loaded up with no problems, but clicking on the demo logos did absolutely nothing at all, the phone just sat there doing nothing. Fortunately, and completely by chance, we tried looking in the Games section of the Download! icon and there the demos were. We were able to download each demo through Download!, and after that Discover N-Gage worked without a problem. Clearly Discover N-Gage has trouble actually starting the downloading of the demos, and perhaps this is linked to the last-minute software problems that have delayed the full N-Gage launch. Read the complete review here
