Roland Tanglao's Weblog

S60 Positives from using an S60 N81 8GB for about 72 hours by Tylor Sherman, our ace Drupal guru and co--op student; check out Tylor's post about his initial S60 and N81 8GB reactions

1. likes bluetooth
2. likes connectivity to computer
3. great hardware

S60 not so positives

1. too many paths to do the same thing
2. couldn't figure out whether or not it would connect to Data network or WiFi, not clear
3. Never heard of OVI (again not a surprise again for Canadians since there is no OVI marketing here)
4. T9 text input not on by default (4 menus deep to turn it on)
5. Web Browser shouldn't allow you to enter invalid characters in URLs

In spite of my whingeing about the not very useful navi wheel and the multimedia key, I am quite happy using the N81 8GB as a walkman for some music while cycling to and from work. The speakers are loud even though they are muffled through my shirt pocket (buttoned for safety) as I cycle in.

Why? Because it doesn't click or move as smoothly as my 2G iPod and it requires you to press hard. Luckily it is set to off by default. I experimented with it on but finally turned it off because it was more annoying than useful.

I kept hearing about the N81 Multimedia key and kept wondering where it was. I think I found it as you can see in the photo above. Hmmm not intuitive and not useful to me because I am used to just hitting the Apps key. Your mileage may vary!

Got an N81 8GB courtesy of the Nokia Blogger Relations Program. The kid and I promptly unpacked and danced around to the mediocre (Maroon 5 is not my cup of tea) music built in. Unlike Stefan and like Alec, I like the build quality; the slide has a very sensual thunk for example and everything feels solid (perhaps Stefan had a creaky prototype?!?!)! The totally unnecessary multimedia key is nowhere to be found thank g*d And everything just works including the web browser which works just as fast as my N95-1. No GPS and only a 2 Megapixel camera so it's not for me but if you are looking for a iPod and don't want Apple (and have lots of money, approximately $CAN 600 according to Alec, unfortunately not available at Dell.ca yet so you have to go through Nokia USA since Nokia.ca is still selling only very old phones) this may be the way to go. More later when I load some good :-) music into this thing. This will probably replace the N800 as my iPod when cycling to work since the speakers are nice and loud!