Since the news about the new upcoming Nokia phones was announced late last month, we haven’t had much focus on two of the most speculated phones unveiled, the Nokia N95 8Gb edition and the Nokia N81.

Nokia N95 (8Gb)

If you are currently using the old Nokia N95 already, it may appeal to you that though this looks like the previous version of Nokia N95, this new 8Gb edition has had some slight alterations to its design to give it a more trendy look.

As you can see in the pics below, the new 8Gb N95 has a larger screen, 2.8 inch to be precise, as a result you may feel that the keys at the bottom of the screen have become squashed abit, however this hasn’t yet raised any major issues. Being a slider phone just like its previous, the multimedia keys which stand out when the sliding screen is pushed downwards have been redesigned to be more prominent and more accessible, increasing your ease of handling video and music play.

Here’s a reminder of how they compare, the original N95:

The new 8Gb N95, has also been speculated to soon be produced in two versions, one that comes with 8Gb internally and one that comes with a 8Gb memory card… it has also been rumoured that the one with fixed 8Gb of internal memory will not have any memory card slot at all…

In addition, the 8Gb N95 will still have onboard all of the best features the previous N95 had to offer, EDGE, 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology, bluetooth, infra-red and also miniUSB 2.0. It will still be running on Symbian OS 9.2, S60 rel. 3.1, neither will there be any changes to the quality 5-megapixel camera the previous N95 had. However, the mechanical lens cover has been removed to make the new N95’s design more slick. The new 8Gb N95 will only be available in black, while it may look more slim (it actually isn’t!), it has actually put on abit of weight, it is now 8grams (128g) heavier than it was before.

In terms of functionality, built-in navigations system covering over 100 different countries, TV out, FM radio, T9 and built-in handsfree will all come with the 8Gb N95. If you’re interested in having a closer look at its specs, we recommend visiting the link here.

Nokia N81

I’m sure everyone will be able to recall the first launch of Nokia’s N-Gage mobiles back in 2003, it was awkward, the platform itself wasn’t really attractive, though the idea and the concept of the phone and design was rather “special”… and because of that, users had to hold the phone in a different way (sideways, as pictured) if they wanted to actually talk to someone on the phone with it…

This is why when Nokia announced about relaunching their N-Gage gaming spirits into their new phones the N95 8Gb and the new phone N81, some people had doubts about what it would be like, will it just end up becoming something that eventually no one was willing to use, once again? Well, what I can say is that, Nokia this time has designed a phone more based on the needs of its customers than their own ambition.

As I mentioned, the N81 is specifically mutlimedia and gaming based. With a 2.4-inch screen, a slider design, Nokia has been thoughtful in designing this phone in that gaming and telephony has both been smoothly fitted into its nutshell. There are two keys which perhaps act as the A and B gaming buttons above its screen, there is also a new feature that no other Nokia slider phones have had in the past. A separate keylock button has been placed to allow convenient gaming while the phone’s slider is closed. In terms of buttons, the phone’s actual keypad has been installed based on a single platform plate which is completely different from the keypad of the N95 for example. Whilst this is so, the top end of the keypad, numbers 1, 2, 3 are very closely placed towards the bottom end of the top slider compartment, this may be a potential issue! However, apart from these minor problems, we would say that the phone itself has some good qualities, especially with Nokia introducing its new Navi wheel touch sensitive menu control, this does make the N81 quite unique (see that in action in the video review below).

Here are some specs:

• Quadband
• TFT, 16 colours, 240 x 320 pixels, 2.4″ screen
• Navi wheel (touch sensitive)
• 140g in weight
• HSDSC
• EDGE
• 3G
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g with UPnP
• Bluetooth
• microUSB 2.0
• Symbian OS 9.2, Series 60 v3.1 UI
• 2-megapixel camera with photolight flash
• Stand-by up to 410 hrs
• Talk-time up to 4 hrs

Like the 8Gb N95, the N81 will also come in two versions, the one with internal onboard 8Gb memory with no memory card slot and the one without onboard 8Gb memory but with a memory card slot.

It’s been rumoured that Nokia’s N-Gage services will commence by November this year (worldwide) and quite possibly this will be the time when the Nokia N81 will be available, we’ll keep you updated!

Here’s a very good video review we saw from YouTube:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ6Y9cltcnU[/youtube]

[via CNET.co.uk]