The N81 8GB is hailed as Nokia’s answer to the iPhone, retailing at significantly less than it’s competitor and targeted at both the music and the gaming markets.

To this end Nokia have created a stylish looking unit with dedicated music and gaming keys and 8 GB of onboard memory. In order to highlight its music phone credentials, it possesses stereo speakers either side of the screen, which are surprisingly loud. In its credit it also has a 3.5mm headphone jack, so it is entirely possible to use your own high quality headphones, rather than the standard Nokia fare in the box.

Another point in the N81’s favour is that the (removable) battery is very good, which is of course necessary for a music phone and certainly improves the lifetime of the unit, not that many people will keep a phone more than 18 months these days now anyway, but it’s good to know.

One of the key features that Nokia are trying to push with the N81 isn’t so much the hardware, but rather what the hardware links to. Nokia are launching the phone with direct access to their brand new Ovi platform, giving access to over 2 million tracks, pre-sale tickets to gigs, downloadable games through the re-launched N-Gage brand and online photo blogging. The N81 comes with both Wi-Fi and 3G to allow fast access to these data heavy services. In addition if you get this on Vodafone, you’ll also be able to access their new MusicStation service for a small subscription fee.

The phone will also support a wider array of file formats than the iPhone such as MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA and is also optimised for gaming, with dedicated gaming keys above the screen, which come into their own when the phone is in landscape mode.

Memory wise the unit is fixed at 8 GB, there is no expandable memory slot, although there will be a unit that takes microSD cards instead of having a large internal memory. File transfer is therefore either over the air or via the micro USB port.

For a phone which is meant to go head to head with the iPhone, the N81 is an interesting attempt, with some very good features. For those people that love Nokia and want a cheaper alternative to the iPhone, this is certainly worth a look and the gaming aspect looks genuinely impressive.