N81 users can now download and install the NGage gaming platform application where select NGage titles can currently be trialled and purchased. The First Access Ngage launch is limited to the Nseries N81 at the moment and will be available to other compatible Nokia users, one would imagine, very soon.

All About Symbian has screenshots as well as the download and NGage FAQ links and promises to bring more news shortly.

Ricky, the Symbian Guru, has an N81 and is getting ready to pump out some screenshots and his impressions on the Ngage First Access as well.

 If you have an N81 and want to get right into it right away, click away.

Anyone out there have an N81 with Ngage up and running, I'd love to hear how it's working for you so far!

I recently had the pleasure of giving the Nokia N81 a test run, courtesy of WomWorld. The N81 isn't completely fresh on the market, however still has the potential to win the hearts of audiophiles worldwide.

THe N81 offered the most impressive audio quality I have ever seen in a mobile, and the internal 8GB of storage provided a healthy means of media storage.

The N81 firmware has been updated to 11.0.045, and is now available through NSU for some product codes. The update includes the Online Share app where Vox and Flickr can be activated and setup. The Navi-wheel is reported to be much more responsive.

Morpog has a great initial report over at Symbian-Freak. Some highlights of his experience with it so far-

- Flash Lite is still at V2.0

- about 2-3mb less ram after fresh bootup, not sure how much because I can't remember the size before flashing.

- Browser doesn't seem to crash anymore when scrolling very fast through bookmarks.

- Realplayer still stutters from time to time when viewing Video Podcasts. CorePlayer does alot better job still.

- Music player sets volume back to its Volume before a Warning tone appeared. Before update it stayed at Profile set Volume of Warning tone, which was very annoying.

- Camera images seem to be a bit less noisy. But it's still horrible at low light situations.

- Just had my first phone hang, I was on Gallery and listening to music. Music stopped, so I watched from my Computer display to my Mobile display and thought what's going on? Tried to start music again but noting happened. Tried to navigate in gallery, nothing happened. Tried swithing to Taskmanager, but it hangs on switch from gallery to taskmanager. Sreensaver and Standbye seems to work still, but i cannot do anything. Even power off doesnt work. Needed to put out battery. My baby runs again. Will let you know if that happens more often.

Fantastic initial look at the firmware- certainly a worthwhile update with some great changes in there. Though once again, and official changelog would be nice so that users know what they're in for.