In the final part of his review of the Nokia N81 Ewan looks at two applications that add a little something to the multimedia and music credentials of the N81: Podcasting and Visual Radio. Ewan then brings us some thoughts about the positioning of this music and gaming orientated Nseries device before coming to an overall conclusion.
Read on in the full article.
Please can somebody try if it's able to play qvga video at 30fps?
Great multi-part review Ewan! Wooo! (applause)
What I do find amusing is that beyond all the gee whiz improvements in the firmware, all the nifty styling, the thing that I enjoy the most about the N81 is the slider � and a specific part of the slider. The reassuringly solid clunk that it makes when you push it open, and the equally satisfying snap as it returns closed.
Is your N81's slider as loose as mine? Mine rattles audibly if I press any of the controls in open mode, which gets very annoying when playing games in vertical mode.
no hardware 3D graphics, unlike the N82 and N95/8gb so some contradiction for being called a gaming device! How long before OMAP2430 in Nokia gaming phones!
I think people are overdoing the significance of 3D chips for phone gaming.
Firstly, 3D hardware is used to enhance 3D graphics, not to create 3D games. Even 8-bit 1980s home computers were able to do true 3D perspective graphics (although they were without textures). 3D chips let you have more detailed 3D graphics, but that doesn't affect the gameplay at all. And if a game is in 2D (for example Brain Training, Lumines etc) a 3D chip doesn't help at all.
Secondly, the graphics won't be that bad anyway. The N81 has enough CPU speed and RAM to run fairly good 3D software engines, certainly good enough for the small screen of a mobile phone. It's something like five times faster than a Nintendo DS, with ten times more RAM. Take a look at this, the 3D graphics are perfectly okay for a phone game (although Asphalt's actual gameplay is another matter...):
http://nokiagaming.blogspot.com/2007/11/asphalt-3-for-next-gen-n-gage-demo.html
Thirdly, the question of graphics is a bit irrelevant anyway. "Hardcore" gamers who want the best portable game graphics should get a PlayStation Portable. Anyone who is expecting the new N-Gage platform to be a rival to consoles is in for a disappointment, because it's not being aimed at that market at all.
The new N-Gage games only cost 6 to 10 euros each, they're not even trying to be Halo 3 or GTA, but something cheaper, lower tech, casual and approachable.
The point of phone games is to appeal to non-serious gamers, to people who don't care about graphics, to people who maybe haven't even bought a game before. Casual gamers are by far the most common kind of people who buy phones, and they outnumber console gamers many times over. As I've said before, Nokia only has to convince 10% of their existing customers to buy N-Gage games and they'll have more users than all the consoles put together. They probably already have a bigger userbase than any single current console, and they haven't even launched yet!
Lovely point on the 3D chips krisse.