Like most Nokia devices nowadays, they come packed in a plain box. The arrangement of the package items is pretty much like the old N81 8GB.
Read the rest of this entry »

Nokia N78

Something to soothe my nerves after my not-so-good exam results.

Nokia handphone user interface is pretty much the same nowadays. The only difference is the ability to customize what you want or don’t want on the screen. Symbian “desktop” (or rather the main screen) have options for you to keep it clean or have a quick launch area for applications.

I found it to be more productive by keeping frequently accessed applications on the “desktop” rather than navigating through the menus to launch them. E51 already came with one-touch keys and the standby applications just makes launching applications easier. One-touch keys are physical keys on the keypad where you can configure them to launch applications. Pretty niffy eh?

It is my first E-Series phone from Nokia. My previous handphones were from the N-Series. Missed call and new messages alerts are a little bit different from the N-Series. Instead of having a alert box at the bottom of the screen, these alerts are elegantly placed on the “desktop”.

I found these method of displaying alerts better than the N-Series as display of an alert box is pretty irritating at times. They just pop up suddenly while you are doing some stuffs on the handphone.

Ah, I like my handphone!

Comparing N81 and E51 side by side, the N81 looks like a meaner machine as it comes with N-Gage features as well as better multimedia features (camera, music player, image gallery, etc) than the E51.

Came across X-Plore from LonelyCatGames. One of the functions is showing of the device information. Most of us would have guessed that N81 would pack better specifications than the E51 due to the better features. So let the pictures do the talking.

It is quite unexpected that the software report that the Nokia E51 have a higher CPU speed than the N81. Well, CPU speed isn’t everything, the CPU architecture determines which few calculations are optimized. Perhaps the N81′s CPU is optimized for drawing 3D objects while E51′s CPU is optimized for raw crunching power?

Have you seen how iPod users navigate up and down their multimedia list simply by running their fingers round the wheel? N81 (8GB) comes with a Navi wheel functionality that works like that.

Multimedia Gallery

Those who have used a N-Series phone should know about the gallery function where you rotate each pictures into view and the rest stays as small thumbnails. You can navigate through the gallery by the use of the navigation button or you can just run your fingers around the Navi wheel and scroll through the gallery. You would need to get used to the Navi wheel as I tend to over scroll.

Zooming in and out of the pictures has never been easier. The set of gaming keys above the display controls the zooming. The zooming function is rather snappy and doesn’t throw “out of memory. Please close application” type of prompts.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Nokia N81 (8GB) is my second handphone that runs on Symbian. The first one is the Nokia N80. Seems like the N81 wins N80 in every aspect except for the camera function.

One thing I like about Symbian OS is that users can freely install and remove applications. One major drawback of the N80 is that it isn’t fast enough to cater to the running of multiple applications. This kind of limits the kind of stuffs you install as some applications really runs too slowly on the N80 system.

Unlike the N80, the N81 (8GB) seems to come with an upgraded processor which makes the navigation rather snappy. Not only that, applications that used to load slow (e.g. Papyrus) loaded fast on the N81. Is it because I am not running as many applications as the N80? I installed back all the stuffs which are present on the N80 to have a better comparison – IM+, Opera, eRecorder, Advanced Call Manager, SMS Spam Manager, Advanced Device Locks, etc. Ran ACM, Spam Manager and Device Locks in the background. Tried launching the Papyrus again, it is still faster than my N80.

At first I thought that with so many features, the N81 would be another phone with non-responsive user interface. Never did I expect that the N81 still performs up to my expectation of a sleek mobile, except that it isn’t exactly slim.