The Nokia N81 8GB is a smartphone with a mix of impressive features… and rather disappointing disadvantages. There’s the obvious advantage of having built-in 8 gigabytes of memory space for applications, games, music, videos, photos, what have you. Some mobile-phone critics have complained about the lack of an expansion slot for more memory, but 8 gigs should be pretty spacious for most people’s needs.

The N81 is a dual-camera 3G phone, but does not have support for HSDPA, which has been available for sometime now. It does, however, let you access the Internet via wifi, so that probably makes up for it. Accessing via wifi in various hotspots -– whether open networks or WEP-enabled secure networks -– didn’t give me any problems, except that websites loaded rather slowly at first. The built-in Web browser is user friendly, though, and looks nice on the 2.4” 16-million-color QVGA display.

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I don’t stay in the office — in my work, I find myself in clients’ own offices, or in one of Davao’s many WIFI-enabled coffee shops. But, even in this age of high cellular phone coverage, I found that I still needed an "office" phone. So I got myself a Bayantel Wireless, which is practically a landline but is in fact a mobile phone. Now I can be contacted either by cellphone or via my portable landline.

Thing is, it’s been about 4 months now that I’ve had this line, and I’m getting very frustrated with it. In the beginning, I tried to be understanding: then, it was a fairly new product by Bayantel, which is probably the most minor player in the country’s telecommunications industry. But it’s been too long that I’ve been trying to be patient! •••Read on»