In the spirit of better-late-than-never, we've finally done a brief summary of how the N81 / N81 8GB performs as a gaming phone for All About N-Gage's hardware section. This aspect of the N81 was missing from All About Symbian's original review of the phone as the N-Gage platform hadn't launched at the time, and we felt it was unfair to judge an N-Gage phone without N-Gage games.
Read on in the full article.
In case anyone's wondering, we're lumping the N81 and N81 8GB together because they're the same phone. The only difference is the N81 8GB has a built-in memory card while the N81 has a card slot instead.
playing games on the N81 feels (in my opinion) perfect, if you wanna play it portrait (which i do for MHP and Brain Challenge) you can do, but for others like System Rush, Creatures Of The Deep and Asphalt - landscape is the better way..... and since the phone is small and compact (as well as nice weight) its a great phone to use as a gaming device.
the only downfall i dislike is the media buttons (play, stop skip fwd etc) - these seem in the wrong place and get caught often.
Yeah, it is VERY comfortable to use N-Gage on the N81 in horizontal mode, the game buttons do their job perfectly.
Emo185 is right about the multimedia keys too, they are a bit awkward to use and I found myself pressing the wrong ones occasionally. It doesn't help that the surface of the phone is completely flat, so you can't feel the media buttons with your fingers.