So what's the problem with the phone?

"The device as a whole feels like a cheap Chinese toy that kills small children due to excessive lead contamination. It creaks, it rattles and it is not the Nokia you grew up with."

...that, a cramped keypad, a crappy camera, a useless navi-wheel, slow wi-fi, and a high price tag pretty much sums up everything.

Now the N81 I played with at the Nokia LA Event didn't have a loose slider and it certainly wasn't rattling. But this guy's experience doesn't really surprise me, after going through the Nokia Flagship Store in NYC a couple of months ago and finding that more than a third of the phones N95s there had slider problems. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the one N95 that I sent to the official Nokia Repair Center for slider repair came back in the form of a replacement model with, guess what - another loose slider. I eventually lucked out with a completely solid N95 slider. Too bad it took 3 tries on ebay.

So anyway, I really hope that the N81 doesn't go the way of the N95, at least in terms of mechanical problems and what I'd deem as manufacturing flaws.

Okay, I just wanted to get that out. As for the rest of the problems, well, all I can say is the N81's (probably) guilty as charged.

If you're an optimist, look on the bright side: Stefan reports that the battery is actually pretty good, the sound quality is "fantastic", and there's plenty of memory to mess around with.

Review: Nokia N81 8 GB, too much money for too little hardware - IntoMobile

Tags: n81, n81 8gb, nokia, phones, reviews

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