I've had the N81 for 2 days now, and the first thing that took my attention is the number of buttons. There is a total number of 17 buttons on N81's interface without counting numbers pad, camera, volume and power buttons. 17 is a huge number if distributed on such a small space, but this is where Nokia got smart by letting only buttons to be used light up in their appropriate time. For example, music keys light up when you're listening to music, game Keys only light up when you're playing a game. You'll never feel the place is overcrowded. Thumbs up!

NaviWheel: It's not as smooth as the ipod's. Sometimes I just can't get it to scroll properly, but I love it! It works in Music player, it works in Gallery, and in Multimedia menu. And it's damn fast! Thumbs up!

Game Keys: Before seeing them in real, I couldn't really get that there are actually 2 buttons on the top phone just for games.. And you know what, I download and play games only because I love these 2 buttons. :) Thumbs up!

Pencil Key and the Silent shortcut: I wanted to copy some stuff from phone memory to the mass memory, so I had to mark many Items.. It took some time to figure out that the "#" button is the one to do so, after they had removed the Pencil Key. Yeah 17 buttons and no pencil key :S It was handy IMO. Anyway, why Nokia did you disable the shortcut to silent mode?!!!! Why do I have to press the power button, scroll to silent mode when I could have just hold down the "#" button?! Thumbs down Thumbs down! It's quite a loss for me :(..

Music Keys: Being placed just around the scroll keys makes me accidentally hit them at many times (Thumbs down), however they're pretty useful when you're navigating through other stuff on the phone (other than the music player). Another thing to improve is the time lag between pressing the key, and it's action to occur. It takes about one second for a song to pause after actually pressing the pause button.. Thumbs down!

Since the "to be released" N96 has almost the same interface as N81's, I hope they've put into consideration those downs that I've mentioned.

Music Capabilities >>>