I recently picked up a Nokia N81 to replace my old phone Sony Ericsson W800i which was starting to give me the shits by turning itself off all the time. Still, after two years of abuse I don’t know what I expected. Anyway, when deciding on my new phone I knew I wanted a good MP3 player with at least a 2 mega-pixel camera and a solid design with good tactile buttons for travelling everywhere with me and occasionally being my portable gaming device.

After some research I decided on the Nokia N81. It looked great, had all the features I wanted, and best of all the new N-Gage.com service was going to mean more games for my new phone. Even before this phone I was a fan of mobile gaming, so the N81 seemed like a logical step for me.

Nokia are selling the N81 as the best mobile gaming phone to date with its sharp screen, odd but functional D-pad and two dedicated gaming buttons. Also, learning from the mistakes of their previous designs, many new games will be able to be played in landscape mode, making the N81 a brilliant device for gaming. Or so I thought.

One big problem I have only just started to notice is the two gaming keys are becoming more and more depressed with each use. I don’t mean depressed like a disillusioned teenager’s MySpace blog, I mean they’ve lost their ‘pop’. I’ve never abused my N81 (I learnt from my mistakes), and in fact do my best to ensure the phone is treated with care, but the gaming buttons just aren’t meant for long term use. After over month of infrequent use the buttons now sit much lower and make a squeaking sound when pressed. They still respond fine, and I’m sure they will continue to work for a very long while, but they just don’t have the same feel as they did when I first got the phone home.


Just so you know the game on this N81 Asphalt 3: Street Rules is pretty shithouse.


In spite of these problems my biggest complaint with my new phone is the new N-Gage game service which is a poorly organised mess. The first problem is the registration process, which on the surface seems simple enough, but has a few bugs that I hope have been ironed out already. To cut a long story short I had to register myself twice to get just one of the logins working. But even then it took a while for the account to become active. Like I said, my first problem wasn’t a big one, but it was annoying.

Once that debacle was over I browsed through the available games. There wasn’t much available and the upcoming looked rather boring. Overall there were only a handful of games coming up that I actually wanted to play. Nokia kept talking about all the game developers they will be working with, but their release list was just so underwhelming. But I figured it’s early days, they need time to get their act together, after all this was still during the First Access period.

Well one month on and N-Gage.com was still showing the same list of largely unimpressive games. I get that it’s a new service and Nokia are still working on it as I write this, but honestly is it that hard to release a new games in a month? Surely they could have just asked SEGA or somebody else with a good history of mobile games to update their titles to support the N81’s landscape mode. That’s all I want!


N-gage.com - a hot bed of activity! Why for just $16 (!) you can play poker! Bargain!


Well the First Access period is finally over – and guess what, most of the games available are the same ones I’ve been looking at since I joined N-Gage. I get that it just launched, but does the N-Gage brand have that good of a reputation that Nokia can just expect people to ride out this launch period? Shouldn’t Nokia be pulling out all stops to make this the number one mobile phone game service? I really wish somebody else would get on this and compete with Nokia to stop them slacking off. I mean even my service provider Optus have a far superior range of games, as do many other online mobile game stores.

What the N-Gage service does well is provide the user with a single username and gives you an ID card that looks almost exactly like an Xbox Live Gamertag. This is a good thing as I really like the way Xbox Live is laid out, but right now this is so under-utilised it’s virtually pointless. It’s great to have a unique ID that can be used for all N-Gage games, but when all these games suck and so few have an online multiplayer component you have to wonder what the point in all this is.

At the end of the day my N81 was bought for a purpose – to be a reliable phone that could also double as a portable entertainment device. And on that level it’s a success. The MP3 playback is fantastic, and the standard headphone input is a welcome change from my old W800i, which needed a specialised adapter. Also the camera, though not perfect, has a good flash and is easy to use taking decent images. It’s only 2 mega-pixels but so far I’ve been more than happy with it. On top of this the phone also has video playback, which I know isn’t a new feature for mobile phones, but when combined with the brilliant built-in stereo speakers the N81 becomes an awesome portable video player. I put a few episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force on it which at 10 minutes long is just the right length for on-the-go entertainment.

Overall I really like the Nokia N81 as a phone I have no regrets at all about choosing it, but the N-Gage service which helped me pick this phone over a few others has turned out to be a big disappointment. If things improve and I suddenly start to fall in love with N-Gage I’ll be sure to write another overly long blog about it. Just don’t hold your breath.