Back in 2003 when Nokia launched the first N-Gage, it wasn't the success that the Finnish company had envisioned it to be. There were a number of reasons, such as the standalone platform, separate game cartridges and awkward design that made users look silly when they were on the phone (at least for the first version anyway). These contributed to the lukewarm attention given to the handset.

If we look at the mobile phone market today, there are a bevy of camera- and music-focused phones from various manufacturers to choose from. However, the multimedia trinity still lacks one player, and that's gaming. While most handsets support some form of gaming, not one has stepped up to the plate to say that it's both a gaming device and a phone. Portable gaming devices like the Sony PlayStation Portable and the Nintendo DS aside, what Nokia has successfully done for now is to port the N-Gage experience over to its S60 platform.

At a recent Go Play event held in Singapore, Nokia launched its music store and introduced the N-Gage games service on its new N95 (8GB) and N81. Like the N95, there are two variants of the N81: One with 8GB of onboard mass memory and one with the option of an external microSD expansion card slot.

The N81 is expected to roll out in Q4 this year. Before that happens, we got hold of a prototype for a quick hands-on of the new music and gaming handset.

One of the first things we noticed was the N81's heft. While some of us may like the weighty feel, it may be a tad heavy for ladies. The design is rather plain and straight-forward for a slider handset and a spring-loaded mechanism finishes the opening and closing actions.

What slightly concerned us was that Nokia may have been a bit too ambitious putting so many features on the top fascia. Besides the usual call/end, left/right, menu, correction and directional keys, there are also music-related controls. Cramp all these together on an area not much larger than the size of our thumb and it can get quite confusing to use. While this is still a prototype unit, we found the buttons a bit stiff. Hopefully that will change when the commercial set becomes available.

As a gaming device, Nokia has also added two buttons above the 2.4-inch QVGA LCD, which we assume is the equivalent of the A and B keys on dedicated gaming controllers. How that actually works, we can't say for sure, although we believe its role will vary depending on the games played.

While we're still on the topic of buttons, the keys on the alphanumeric pad are not individual pieces. Instead, Nokia has opted for a single uniform plate with etched horizontal strips to separate the numerals. We already foresee a tiny problem. The first row is too close to the bottom edge of the top slider so the thumb would have to be raised when typing 1, 2 or 3.

The power button, 3.5mm audio jack and a spring-loaded keylock (yes, you heard it right) are on the top edge of the N81. At the beginning, we couldn't understand why Nokia would include a separate keylock for the device since closing the slider would automatically lock the softkeys. We soon realized the reason. It is to unlock the controls so you can actually play games even after closing the slider.

As most of the recent Nseries handhelds have migrated to mini-USB ports for connecting to the PC, it was surprising to find the N81 using a micro-USB connector. In terms of features, the N81 is quite a workhorse with a quadband radio, 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth stereo. There's also a 2-megapixel camera on the back with built-in photolight.

According to Nokia, the N-Gage service will be available globally in November 2007. The free application can also be downloaded at that time.