The history of the dedicated gaming trend in Nokia phones had begun quite a while ago with the release of the pretentious Nokia N-Gage gadget. The trend was widely advertised and advanced, its development costs and marketing advancement had an immense span at the very beginning, but shortly after facing the real-life market it had to be frozen for a long time. Two gaming phones, launched into production to support this trend suffered disastrously low sales – less than 2 million devices were sold during the whole sales period. The income was incomparable to losses. There are several reasons to explain this, firstly the two phones themselves, namely N-Gage and N-Gage QD were in fact an unwieldy solution: size and product design proved unacceptable for mass production. Launched on May 2004, Nokia N-Gage QD was a seriously simplified version of its precursor as well as more compact and cheap, but even a considerable drop in price didn’t help the device to become popular and breathe life into the new trend. Another explanation can be found in the weak hardware platform, the models couldn’t compete with dedicated gaming consoles. Being a mean compromise between a limited communication functionality and a somewhat nerfed gaming capability, the N-Gage, despite of their initial positioning by the manufacturer, were hardly fit for the mass market.

Let’s try to understand what ideas were initially put into the game phone design. First of all, a manufacturer should present customers with new solutions, waiting for response. Mobile games are a perfect way to attract new audiences, especially the youth. In this situation the main goal, quite expectedly, is getting extra profit - and that can be achieved by selling mobile content. Initially N-Gage applications were exclusively limited just to the two devices of the same brand, but shortly after the protection was broken and the games became available to usual smartphones through tinkering with home-brewn hacks . The majority of mobile gamers no longer had to buy N-Gage (QD), as it was now possible to use a regular smartphone with richer features. So, the content sales went up and the pitiful device sales dropped even lower. This awkward situation seemed to be oppressive at the moment, but in fact everything went on in a different way. Naturally, the failure of N-Gage sales caused a refusal from further game phone production, but the platform itself was not forgotten and continued to develop and improve.

Wading aside our traditional way of telling the tale, first we’ll offer you a taste of the rich gaming functionality of the platform (and Nokia N81 in particular) and only then the usual description of the device’s characteristics will follow.

The idea itself, accordingly, was changed. After refusing from dedicated game device production the profit could only be gained from selling downloadable game content. So it’s obvious that the more devices would support such games, the more profit the manufacturer would receive, so finally Nokia N-Gage came to be not a device, but a software platform, and the company followed the trodden path. One of the most remarkable events was Nokia’s collaboration with Electronic Arts. EA is one of the main providers of N-Gage-oriented games. In 2006 among these games were Tetris, Tetris Mania, The Sims 2, Doom, FIFA 06, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 06 and FIFA Street 2. At Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) ‘2006 a few new games for this platform were presented as well - Creatures of the Deep, ONE, Pocket Aces, Pro Series Golf, Space Impact, System Rush: Evolution. Apart from the new generation of games for the third S60 revision, a number of already existing games, initially developed for N-Gage (QD), including a few by Eidos Interactive, were redesigned. Among other providers of games designed for N-Gage, we can mention Digital Chocolate, Capcom, Indiagames, Vivendi Games Mobile, Gameloft, I-play and others, the list will be permanently expanded, providing wider and wider variety of applications.

The Nokia company, co-operating with the well-known mobile game publishers, seeks to offer maximum comfort to gamers but the idea is not only about quality and various content, but also in the technologies applied. A few years ago while launching Nokia N-Gage (QD) these two devices missed possibilities which could provide additional conveniences, connected with games, content downloading, scores publishing and so on, online games and communities found realization as exclusive N-Gage Arena service, but the GPRS performance wasn’t enough for large data transfers Today’s technologies pose no limits to performance, data processing speed and hardware characteristics. High-speed wireless technologies used in of modern multimedia devices of the new generation provide comfortable and high-speed application search and downloading online games, and so on. Communities is one of the key moments in the new Nokia strategy, N-Gage Arena users can communicate with each other, download exclusive content, get access to ratings and game statistics, they get a chance to participate in different competitions and so on.

The company seeks to grant these features to as many customers as possible by introducing N-Gage functionality into every new phone they make if its hardware platform can support it. We should do justice to another important feature – a hardware 2D\3D accelerator is not for using the N-Gage software platform capabilities.

As we have already said, Nokia N81 isn’t positioned like a revolutionary product, as you probably remember that the first Nokia’s step towards developing a line of mobile gaming products was the mid-2006 introduction of the N93 model, that had THE! famous and well-known System Rush: Evolution game preinstalled the game was slightly redesigned to match new software and hardware requirements. Nokia N93 is based on Texas Instruments hardware platform, OMAR 2420 chip with graphics accelerator, so gaming capabilities of this smartphone clearly demonstrated what could be expected next. But Nokia N93 wasn’t positioned like a gaming smartphone, the preinstalled System Rush merely demonstrated the features of new processor, graphical features, the time for new N-Gage hadn’t come yet by that time. Basing on these facts, Nokia was preparing the market for a future game device advancement into the masses. Next appeared the gamer-friendly slider Nokia N95.

Finally, on August 29 ‘2007 at the Go Play! expo Nokia introduced two new products especially designed to support the N-Gage platform Nokia N81 and its 8Gb modification and Nokia N95 8Gb. There’s a huge hardware difference between the two and look scarcely comparable, let alone the totally different target audiences. It might seem that Nokia N81 is just another shelf filler with negligible chances for success, obscured by the looming shadow of the worshipped N95 which is now in full supply and is offered at a stable and fair price, but there’s a bit more to it than just plain marketing concerns. Mobile entertainment is still a poorly explored land, and from the point of view of an ordinary consumer the gaming service won’t look attractive as long as he doesn’t get a pretty clear idea of what he’s offered and vice versa, an unattractive product, even alien in a way, won’t make its way into the masses quick enough to get the customers acquainted with its advantages, thus giving an impulse for further massive sales – imagine a snake biting the tip of its tail, the same unending tragicomic loop here… unless someone finds a way to sell the gaming device in the guise of something more familiar and friendly looking, literally smuggling the gaming features between the decks to emerge suddenly when the owner begins to explore his newly bought gadget out of boredom or curiosity. N81 was given a clearly distinguishable musical orientation, powered by a large amount of memory – and in this incarnation it looks more like a flagship music phone which already has an established customer audience, at the same time acting as the steam engine of the N-Gage campaign. To kill two birds with one stone, Nokia first hurls two stones at a bird, i.e. two phones in the guise of one are offered in a bit aggressive manner to the suspicious customer – let’s see how much of a bargain that would be, beginning with the gaming alter ego of the device.

Nokia N-Gage Interface

The N-Gage menu item splits into five categories which can be cycled through by pressing the navigation button left and right just similar to the standby mode:

Nokia N81 ships with three preinstalled games, namely Space Impact Light, FIFA 07 and Asphalt 3. The graphics are on a high level – something never observed with a cell phone before. Application performance is next to perfect, no lags were noticed so far. The genre and content of the games mentioned are easily deductible from the titles, Asphalt 3 being our special favorite – something designed after the Need For Speed classic series. FIFA 07 is a cool soccer simulator which will surely be liked by lots of people. A few screenshots will follow, but of course they’re nowhere near to the real experience you get after playing for a few minutes, holding the phone in your own hands. One might ask, why did they include only a few games if it’s a gaming phone after all? The answer would be simple: the fewer games you get, the more you’ll be tempted to buy! The existing ones are enough to get a person involved into the fascinating N-Gage reality. Nokia’s intention is quite obvious: if you are keen on gaming, you’ll have to buy extra games and if you are not, you don’t have to pay a higher price for something nearly useless shipped as a part of the product.

The model is based on a single-chip solution from Freescale, there is no double architecture, like in Nokia N95, so at many points Nokia N81 is similar to the N76, for instance. The advantage of the Freescale chip consists in a high performance for typical operations, the smartphone has almost reached the performance level of regular cell phones. But for a game-oriented device the situation is ambiguous. Like Nokia N73, which also supports installing N-Gage applications and, correspondingly, the whole existing range of applications for this platform, Nokia N81 runs all games without any observable limitations. There may be a number of explanations to this fact, the most obvious one being that not every application uses the hardware 3D accelerator functionality in top models, at least in such cases graphics rendering can be done by the less productive processor. For the end users, the difference is just theoretical, but on the mass market scale the usage of a cheaper single-chip platform grants the manufacturer numerous advantages mainly concerning the cost of hardware components and the product lead time. That factor is very important, considering the product being marketed mainly towards youth audiences. It’s not hard to guess that Nokia N81, being the first model designed in the new genre, is just an opening to a future line of gaming smartphones - the rush of inexpensive gaming devices is quite predictable in the nearest future. The trick is that though the target audience can’t afford an expensive handset it’s quite solvent in the long run, gradually purchasing content like games and music straight from the web.

Games support both portrait and landscape screen orientations. In the former case the two dedicated game buttons above the screen would make the best controls. As you might already have guessed, those are real, non-touch rocker buttons; they’re tight enough to give the finger a solid feel upon pressing. While in game, the buttons are backlit and otherwise remain dimmed and almost unnoticeable. Besides these two buttons, the Navi Wheel also takes part in the gaming process as a control element, as well as the keypad just like with the traditional phones. As a gaming phone, N81 copes with the task quite well, being a highly ergonomic solution, the very first phone to consider gaming a priority rather than a complementary feature. The overall dimensions are optimal, the screen is big enough for an absolute majority of situations but yet N95 8GB is a more preferable solution in this aspect even considering its lower ergonomics in the gaming domain.

In essense, N-Gage is an application which can be independently installed on any device that supports it. In the group, besides the recently presented novelties, we can mention Nokia N95, N93(i), and N73. The last one doesn’t possess a hardware 3D accelerator, but N-Gage. In future all new multimedia smartphones will support N-Gage game services with a less of more clear emphasis on the gaming side. The Nokia has been following the idea that all the features should organized as simply as they. Increasing the number of supported devices is the most important task for Nokia, game sales depend directly on this. An interesting fact is that new Samsung smartphones based off the S60 platform will also support N-Gage, they are fully compatible. A number of non-smartphone devices are also stated to support the N-Gage technology.

The conclusion is obvious: having started with producing and launching purely gaming devices with an ambitious yet not widely recognized potential Nokia step-by-step passed to content distribution backed with a wide range of devices supporting this kind of games but not at the expense of limited functionality. According to the words of the company’s reps, the N-Gage brand was purposely launched to represent dedicated gaming gadgets first, than the trademark comprised a vast number of phones from other market segments, sharing one common feature – the famed N-Gage software platform that came to replace the hard-coded N-Gage support of the early precursor devices.

The following features are to become iconic for the newly born class of gaming phones:

After a closer look at the marketing perspectives of the new N81 model, seen as a key product designed to promote the new gaming platform, everything becomes clear. The model is planned for mass production, it’s quite inexpensive and designed to cater to most audiences due to its neutral design, popular form factor and the largest amount of memory on board available on the market today, let alone the brilliant implementation of the player functionality - the product’s main audience will largely consist of people looking for mobile gaming opportunities, and the Nokia engineers did their best at making mobile gaming as comfortable as possible - up to the point where you don’t have to sacrifice any other features in exchange. The further success depends on the intensity of the advertising campaign, reaction of the market and a multitude of miscellaneous factors. Offering not a single, but several models that support such functionality the company will gradually become able to win a vast audience for the new gaming platform. But it’s going take a plenty of time, of course. In future Nokia is planning to introduce an increasing number of N-Gage devices, this trend is becoming of an increasingly high priority to the company. Though the opportunity to download N-Gage applications directly to the phone will appear later (at the same time with the release of the 17 mentioned games and, of course, a lot of new ones), only then we’ll be able to speak about how useable the support for this service is. The compay are planning to start distributing games in November 2007, by this time the company are planning to increase the overall count of available N-Gage games to 35, that is more than just sufficient to attract public attention to the N-Gage platform. The average cost of a game is €10, that is quite affordable for the majority of consumer considering the high quality of offered content itself – as, for example, almost such amounts of money we waste for buying music albums, films and games for PC.

With such an active position concerning the market of mobile gaming solutions, the variety of devices and quality games, Nokia have made a serious claim for leadership in the whole segment, the company’s positions are going to eventually improve, at least for the time being Nokia guys have all the trumps in their hands.

At this point we’ll cease talking about the gaming platform and its capabilities and perspectives, passing to the hardware aspect and its characteristics. It’s worth mentioning that no other phone but Nokia N81 8GB will be the cornerstone of Nokia’s sales for a few months ahead, the light version with the memory expansion slot is meant to be only a portfolio expansion and a complement to its bigger brother but little more.

	Nokia N81 8GB general specifications
Communications:	EGSM 850/900/1800/1900, UMTS 850/2100
Storage:	128 Mb of user memory, 8GB of integrated flash memory
Screen:	2,4" , QVGA (240х320), 16M
Data transfer protocols:	USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, A2DP supported
Camera:	2 Mpix (up to 1600x1200)
Battery:	BP-6MT 3.7V 1070 mAh up to 240 minutes of talktime up to 408 hours of standby
Overall dimensions:	102 x 50 x 17.9 mm
Weight:	140 g
Estimated price:	€430

Design & Ergonomics

Nokia N81 utilizes the slider form factor, the overall dimensions aren’t that large for a smartphone, being mere 102х50х17,9 mm. The device sits in the hand in a most comfortable manner, the plastic that the casing is made from is glossy which aren’t very helpful for a gaming phone. The design is in keeping with the latest of Nokia’s standard, it gives a strict, classic feel yet not too outfashioned thanks to the smooth, vague surface of the button – symbols which are not backlit are merely visible. The product color is black, the side pieces and the Navi Wheel being blue in the light version and light brown in the 8Gb variant.

As compared to Nokia 6110 Navigator:

As compared to Nokia N95:

As compared to Nokia E65:

The quality of material is very high, the built quality is next to perfect, there’s no play between the parts of the device. The sliding mechanism makes think of E65, 6110 Navigator – almost ideal (well, why ‘almost?’). The right edge of the casing hosts the two-positioned volume button along with the camera controls. The light version of the handset also features a miroSD expansion slot on the left edge (you won’t find one with N81 8Gb). Each edge has a big stereo speaker covered with a metal mesh, the sound quality is very high, similar to Nokia 6290. The sound is overly loud, it’s hard to miss a call even during a Marilyn Manson’s live performance. The bottom end features the microUSB slot which becomes sort of a standard for the newer Nokia models, and the charger slot is situated nearby.

Among other features of N81 we’d note the presence of a keypad blocking slide button (like in Nokia N91), it’s placed on the top end of the device near to the 3,5 mm headset jack. The way it works is slightly modified, it no longer works like a toggle switch with two extreme positions similar to its forerunner, but rather consequently blocks and unblocks the keypad after each move of the slide button that automatically returns to its starting position. The sales package also includes a headset supplied with an AD-54 remote controls, which has also been redesigned to match the device’s appearance, the media buttons are flat. Also sound volume controls and the call response button were added, meaning that the remote control is now a very handy addition itself, since the release of Nokia N91 the company has established a reputation of a leading manufacturer of music-oriented solutions, especially when it comes to the player ergonomics. Other companies don’t seem to pay as much attention to the ergonomic aspect of the integrated mp3 players as Nokia does (introducing additional buttons and the remote control accessories).

The back surface of the device is smooth and glossy, which also makes it prone to scratching and wearing away, the soft-touch would have made a better designer choice in this case. The integrated 2 Mpix camera lens is situated nearby, the photos quite in accordance with its specifications turn out rather poor. The video resolution is VGA, the fps is 15, and the quality is somewhere a little below average. A LED flashlight accompanies the module. The back panel is fully removable, it hides a 1070 mAh behind. The SIM card holder is completely made of metal, it can be retracted from the case forth and back. An unusual yet handy design.

Screen

The screen of Nokia N81 sports a traditionally high quality characteristic of the latest Nokia solutions of this class, the diagonal is 2,4” just like Nokia N73, N93, N76 and so on. The screen is powered by the TFT technology, it’s capable of displaying up to 16M colos, the mirror backing allows for a high legibility even while the screen is exposed to the direct sunlight. The view angles are great, you can read the screen information from almost any angle. The brightness is more than good, however due to some obscure reason the phone lacks the traditional luminance sensor, so brightness can only be adjusted manually. At the maximum level of brightness the phone looks better than Nokia 95. The following images are to illustrate a comparison of the two screens, N81 seems to display more realistic colors.

The screen is one of the best available on the market today, the image quality deserves the highest appraisals. The only drawback is the occasional glaring produced by the protective glass.

Controls, Navi Wheel, Keypad

he block of controls is notable for the presence of additional buttons active in the player mode – rewind, playback, pause, everything on this side is similar to what we observed with Nokia N91 except the location of the buttons. The controls block is absolutely flat, the polished buttons look stylish, but despite of this ergonomics hasn’t suffered at all, as it might seem at first. The buttons aren’t the touch-type (including the gaming ones), actually they’re real, rocker-type button that possess a good feedback and cause no troubles at all. The extra player buttons are not as comfortable as the rest, the problem lies behind their small size and a position too close to the navigation key and other controls elements. The button symbols are backlit only when the multimedia menu or the player are activated, otherwise they are not.

The so-called Navi Wheel is an interesting feature, it's actually a means for operating the multimedia component – in the player mode, FM tuner, while watching video and so on. Navi Wheel in essense is a navigation key, or to be more exact, its edges are. The Navi Wheel has nothing in common with the player control buttons, only the silver (or blue) border is sensitive to the touch. The principle of operation is rather simple: in the music menu it allows to scroll the playlist in a rapid manner, you have just to pass the finger over the button clockwise or counter-clockwise, correspondingly scrolling goes up or down, in practice it’s very handy. Here lies a very distinctive difference between solutions offered by Nokia and the ones by Samsung, for example. The thing is that so-called touch sensor prinsiple is combined with the regular controls, i.e. a the navigation button equally reacts to regular strokes, and if that’s not to your liking, the option can easily be switched off in the appropriate menu. Then the navigation key will work only in the traditional way. Giving a more detailed description of how the sensor works, we’d note that, for instance, the tab browsing is possible both by passing the finger over the navigation key’s borders and by pressing the button left and right.

The majority of users are bound to be pleasantly surprised with the fact that Nokia resolved the problem in such a way – by combining the really innovative sensor control with standard, habitual ways. The thing is that the button has no moving parts, it’s completely static, but still reacts to the touch in a very specific manner. This is a real advantage the model, its unique feature, the development of this idea in future is going to bring exclusively positive results.

The keypad is made of a thin piece of plastic, the buttons are very flat, but still comfortable to operate, they yield neatly and give a nice feedback. Due to the large size of the buttons, stray keystrokes almost never occur.

Nokia N81 is supplied with a LED indicator which flashes white over even periods of time, it's integrated into the Navi Wheel, the flashing can be switched off. It has no other custom settings, it's a pity because some of the phones by Nokia could have their LED lights customized to indicate misses calls, messages and miscellaneous events.

Battery

The standard battery sports a capacity of 1070 mAh which is quite enough for most consumers, the manufacturer claims some 3,1 hours (GSM) / 2,4 hours (WCDMA) of talk time and 9,5 days of standby. The device proved able to withstand about two days under moderate duty (about an hour of talk time, four hours of listening to music, an hour of taking photos, browsing the menus and so on). Comparing this handset to Nokia 95, we should especially underline the advantage of the former in this competition, which is quite justified by the musical and gaming orientation of the device. The continuous mp3 cycle in flight mode lasted as long as 12 hours.

Nokia N81 8GB Battery

Model	Nokia N81 8GB	Nokia N95
Moderate duty	2 days	1 day
Multimedia cycle, video (3GP)	3:45	2:30
Multimedia cycle, audio (MP3)	11:50	8:10

Data transfer protocols

Communications. The model possesses a standard set of data exchange features for its class, the available slots include a microUSB slot for plugging the data cable, the 3.5 mm headset jack and the slim charger slot. The microUSB slot became a standard to the latest generation of SE products, the only bad thing about it is that the data cables are seldom sold separately and it’s hard to find and buy one without a phone attached. The data transfer speed is comparable with that of Nokia 6290. The USB protocol version is 2.0, the Mass Storage mode is fully supported, it’s possible o choose between Mass Storage, PC Suite and Modem connection types. The device doesn’t go offline when used in the Mass Storage mode, the phone retains all of its functionality.

The model is designed to operate in EGSM 850/900/1800/1900 frequency bands as well as in WCDMA 850/2100, but unfortunately lacks HSDPA support.

As stated by the manufacturers, the Bluetooth version is 2.0 + EDR with the following profiles supported:

As stated by the manufacturers, the Bluetooth version is 2.0 + EDR with the following profiles supported:

The Bluetooth data transfer speed reaches 130 Kb/s at its peak points. The Bluetooth visibility period can be specified by the user, ranging from a minute to an hour.

Similar to the rest of multimedia computers, a Wi-Fi module is present, supporting the b/g standard and the WLAN Wizard, a simple wizard application that will help you out while configuring network connections. There is also special application Home Media that has been clearly improved. The application allows you to manage N81 content using Wi-Fi connection.

Performance

In the terms of performance, a huge difference from the rest of Nokia smartphones can be observed here, the standard CPU frequency used to be 220 Mhz as specified by the TI OMAP 1710 chipset features. In the current case we see a significant improvement over the old value, which can only be adequately explained by the new hardware platform. Without dwelling deep into the technical details, we’d say that the performance closely approaches that of the casual phones, it’s really fantastic for a smartphone. It’s almost as quick in most operations, that’s a great advantage, the hardware part is mostly the same as 6290, N76 – the quite comparable performance and harware specifications hint at that fact. Nokia N95 displays significantly more impressive results due to the presence of an integrated 2d/3d graphics accelerator.

Model	Nokia N81 8GB	Nokia 6110 Navigator	Nokia N95	Sony Ericsson W910i
Jbenchmark 1.0.1 Score	5618	5820	5311	7222
Text	1583	1644	1419	1964
2D Shapes	1451	1490	1303	1983
3D Shapes	697	716	640	873
Fill Rate	373	394	336	667
Animation	1514	1601	1613	1735
Jbenchmark 2.0.1 Score	595	697	568	978
Image Manipulations	379	414	410	321
Text	718	772	710	657
Sprites	535	578	520	505
3D Transform	906	916	817	662
User Interface	594	870	476	12617
Jbenchmark 3D HQ	203	206	973	371
Jbenchmark 3D LQ	376	4154	1018	424
Triangles ps	52067	60551	48330	30619
KTexels ps	3452	3799	6393	1517
Jbenchmark HD Gaming Score	162 (5.4 fps)	176 (5,9 fps)	91 (3.0 fps)	151 (5.0 fps)
Smooth triangles	104296	110221	44190	28641
Textured triangles	83570	88045	27310	24299
Fill rate, KTexels	2189	3464	1107	1972

The device works under command of one of the latest revisions of the Symbian operating system, namely v9.2 S60v3FP1. There’s no support for fast boot, nevertheless booting only takes about 20 seconds.

The amount of free user memory is about 48 Mb after the OS has been loaded, and the overall memory size is 96 Mb. Similar values are observed with the above mentioned Nokia N76, 6610 Navigator, that’s quite sufficient for most situations. The maximum heap and jar size are unlimited

The integrated storage size is 128 Mb, up to 35 Mb is available for keeping user data, but that doesn’t matter much since the phone sports an integrated flash module storing up to 8Gb of custom data (or the memory expansion slot for the light version)

User Interface

The software part mostly coincides with Nokia N95, 6110 Navigator and a multitude of Nokia products based off the S60 3rd edition FP1 platform. This also means that all of the base functionality provided with the platform is present here as well, save for a few moments that will be discussed in the article a bit later. The difference from the earlier versions is rather minor, including the OS-level support for the A2DP profile, HSDPA, the updated Nokia Web Browser, Freescale CPU support. The latter is one of the key features indicating the smooth transition to CPUs other than TI OMAP, leading to significant portfolio expansion. As it has been already mentioned, the hardware platform based off the Freescale chip is notable for lower development costs combined with a high performance, especially when it comes to the menus and standard applications like the phonebook, PIM, messaging service, camera and so on – the stereotypical image of a “slow smartphone” is waning into obscurity thanks to such products as Nokia 6290, N76, 6110 Navigator, 6120 Classic and so on. Formally these belong to the mod-end market and none of them is remarkable for an outstanding functionality or any claims for a top position in any sector – the real flagships will be TI OMAP (2420 / 2430) solutions with a hardware 2D/3D accelerator, the standard task performance will stay on the same level. This way Nokia are developing two branches of devices targeted at different market sectors: multimedia-oriented flagship models and high-performance mid-end products, expanding the presence of smartphones on the mass market.

Nokia N81 (8GB) shares a common hardware base with all of the above-mentioned models, i.e. the model is based off a single-chip Freescale solution which stands for a high performance in most situations; the testing results are listed in the corresponding chapter of the article.

The arrangement of menu elements is quite typical for Nokia smartphone, almost nothing new can be observed here. There are four menu viewing options including the new 3D profiles Horseshoe and V-shaped – looking interesting, working not too comfortable. but the most important thing is that Navi Wheel expands the existing menu functionality in a very remarkable way, giving it a totally new sense along with an improved ergonomics.

The menu isn’t animated, however one pleasant thing is that the right corner of every menu item no matter if the icon is a shortcut or a folder, a semi-circular mark appears if the application is currently running in the background.

The Go-To standby mode expansion first appeared among the S60-based Nokia products, the pioneers being 6680/6681. From five to eight (depending on the screen resolution and orientation) application shortcuts, schedule gist and player settings were originally the stuff that this feature allowed to pass to the screen during standby. Later the Go-To active standby mode appeared with Series40 as well, also sporting an expanded functionality – simple phones came to beat smartphones at least in one area, which looked a bit unusual.

Some of the latest devices based off S60v3 Feature Pack 1 utilizes an improved version of the go-to active standby mode allowing for some addon modules, simply speaking an opportunity to let the summary info on the currently running applications to be shown on the screen.

The Go-To active standby mode can be switched off if the user doesn’t feel that he really needs a lot of info and shortcuts to be displayed in the standby mode. As seen in its standard implementation, the active standby mode makes a row of six shortcut icons to appear on the screen, the number of icons is unfortunately limited unlike with the Series 40 products. Also there’s an opportunity to set custom shortcuts for 3rd party applications, which is really comfortable since you no longer have to go to lots of menus one after another to launch a frequently used application like ICQ.

One of the Go-To options is the enhanced Search function, there were some slight changes introduced in comparison with the rest of Nokia smartphones, but on the whole the functionality remains the same. You can search anywhere ranging from Interned to your own content, messages, calendar events and alike, the application bears strong analogies with the Smart Search function widely used by Samsung.

The multimedia menu design has been revamped again, now the Navi Wheel provides for circular browsing of the tabs, it looks just as beautiful as it’s comfortable. A separate button (earlier used in Nokia N91 exclusively for switching on the mp3 player) is used here for calling up the menu. Similar to Nokia N95, it’s possible to add new menu items and customize their order. Such design looks both practical and visually appealing, in most cases it replaces the regular main menu.

The variety of devices based off FP1 can differ in some of the minor points like the menu elements arrangement and the order of icons, which doesn’t make a serious difference anyway since you can always customize this aspect to your liking.

Similar to the rest of S60 devices, the voice control feature doesn’t require getting used to the user’s voice in order to operate, you can use voice control without any preparation since the device adapts to your voice almost instantly, but you can also turn this adaptation off as well if the phone is used by a number of people. The voice control is activated by holding the right button pressed for a short period of time. The list of voice control settings tab includes five options (Modes, Mailbox, Bluetooth, Voice Recorder, Camera) but any other application can be added to the list as well.

The handset offers a few themes, it’s possible to choose a screensaver, the default option being a screen-size clock, but a text message or an animation could be useв as well (each preinstalled theme has a unique associated screensaver. If you choose a custom animation, you must specify the playback time and backlighting duration, it stands to reason to specify the same value in both cases.

Phonebook & Call Service

The contact book is among the most powerful features of S60-based smartphones. Almost no difference can be observed on this front as compared to earlier versions. Some slight changes in the information field layout and visual effects are the only thing that makes a difference in this FP1-based firmware. The number of contact records is only limited to the amount of free user memory, which is quite typical of almost every smartphone. There are three types of fields for phone numbers, video calls, IP-phone numbers, fax numbers, e-mail address, web address, mail addresses and a single type of field for pager number, first and last name, note and date. Only one Name/Last name and Birthday record can be set per contact, but the rest of the fields can be ‘cloned’ as many times as you wish, besides i.e. you can both delete fields which appear as unnecessary and create new ones. The length limit of a field is 50 symbols. The mail address field includes seven subfields. The Symbian’s field renaming feature is quite expectedly included in the phonebook service. Not only the phone number, but as well the e-mail address, video call number, SMS, MMS and PPT contacts can be set as standard. The PhotoID service stays same with previous versions, so you might want to look for a 3rd party application since Nokia sticks to their purposely limiting this functionality. The very word ‘thumbnail’ is just enough to ascribe the deal. A contact can be associated with a VideoID clip that would play every time this person calls you over the phone. The priority is given to the VideoID should a contact have both a picture and a video associated. The ringtone will be completely replaced with the video soundtrack, which to some would appear annoying. Only .mp4 files can be used by the VideoID function.

There are three options for listing contacts:

Quite, accordingly the phonebook search can be performed not only by a single field, the search phrase length limit is 40 symbols. A dedicated tab lists the user groups, switching between the tabs is done by pressing the navigation button left and right, each of the groups can be specified a unique ringtone.

The integrated speec