At Nokia’s Go Play event in London, two new handsets have been introduced – the N81 and the N81 8GB. The devices have been designed to complement both the music store on Nokia’s new Ovi online portal and the N-Gage gaming platform - all wrapped up in a sleek slider design and peppered with rich multimedia features.

The two handsets sport dedicated music buttons on the bottom and gaming keys on either side of the speaker. The keys also selectively light up when needed so they won’t get in the way if they aren’t used. Then there are Bluetooth, a 3.5 mm headphone jack with stereo headset and a 3D multimedia menu which makes accessing content a fun experience.

The phones are preconfigured for the Nokia Music Store and N-Gage, so there is no delay to the gaming or music experience. Apart from that, they run Nokia’s S60 3^rd Edition Feature Pack 1 smartphone operating system, are compatible with 3G UMTS networks and provide 802.11b/g WLAN connectivity.

Overall the two devices are mostly alike with the one point of difference being the internal storage and expansion slots. The N81 has a built-in microSD memory card expansion slot, while the N81 8GB has 8GB internal storage but no expansion card slot. The devices are expected to be released in Q4 this year.

Tags | Bluetooth, gaming, Go Play, handset, music, N-Gage, nokia, Nokia Music Store, Ovi