The Nokia Blogger Relations Program sent me a Nokia N81 8GB mobile phone on Thursday. This is a sharp-looking, piano black mobile phone with a screen that's about two-thirds the size of the iPhone. It's got a slide that exposes a standard Nokia 12-button keypad.

I'll try to publish a photo when I can find one or when I have time to take a reasonable photo myself.

The new features that I've found on the N81 8GB so far are the Multimedia Menu which provides a new navigation method to access multimedia content on the device, and support for N-Gage gaming including some special keys that are designed to make the gaming experience better.

The N81 8GB looks like a device centered around music, video playback, and gaming. It's less full featured in terms of still and video capture than the N95 and N93 that I've discussed previously. The camera on the N81 8GB has good dedicated controls, but "only" a 2-megapixel image sensor and no apparent zoom during video capture.

More on the multimedia capabilities of this phone in coming days.

I am so far in front of the U.S. launch of the N81 8GB that the N-Gage gaming site intended to support it hasn't launched yet. The site says it will launch in December, so I hope it will be ready within a couple of weeks.