Nokia N-Gage announced

flywheel

Nokia announced their N-Gage mobile game deck device today.



Features:
- Color screen, 176x208 pixels with up to 4096 colours
- Series 60 platform and Symbian Operating System (OS)
- Bluetooth wireless technology for gaming
- An eight-way directional controller "Rocker" for game play
- Multimedia messaging (MMS)
- Triple band GSM (900/1800/1900), GPRS mobile phone
- Digital Music player (AAC/MP3) & Stereo FM radio
- Nokia Audio Manager PC SW for managing own music files
- Comprehensive range of applications; e-mail and personal information management
- XHTML browsing
- Java (TM)application support
- Connectivity:
calendar synchronization with PC, USB for music file and application download

Full press release
http://press.nokia.com/PR/200302/890630_5.html

Let the games begin

BrianG

talla

heres another view on the ngage from the register:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/29214.html

mirv

Announced today? It was known ages ago, I just hope I can play its games on my 3650 (getting one in a few weeks)

flywheel

yup they a gave a preview in Nov last year at their Mobile Internet Conference in Germany, official announcement of the production device and games line-up happened yesterday

good point hope it is compatible with the 3650, having to take the battery out to swap the MMC card in the 3650 coming out as a negavite point in reviews at the moment though (the MMC slot on the N-Gage is accessable outside). not having one at all in the 7650 was a big downside but they wanted it to market

still have to wait until Q4+ for the N-Gage to arrive though, so no holding of breath anyone please

BrianG

talla

Hi Brian,
according to the register article it describes the process of changing MMC as the same as 3650, i.e. u have to take out battery and pop the card into a slot under the battery. Its one of the points that they were highly suspect about

flywheel

crazyness what are they on! - thought i'd read about exernal MMC slot on the N-Gage - thanks for pointing that out talla

BrianG

flywheel

was having an IM with a hardware mate of mine and the N-Gage came up - he suggested a reason they are keeping it under the battery...

hot-swapping memory cards can be a difficult thing to manage on a system, he mentioned hearing that was one of the issues SE had to get sorted with the MemorySitck Duo slot to the P800

maybe it was one less design thing to worry about if they left it where it was (like the 3650) so there was no way of hot-swapping as the battery has to be removed, modifying Series 60 to cater for it might have pushed production out further?

it's an alien concept for a games unit not be able to slip a cartridge in and out

mirv

Well the SL42i had hot-swappable MMC, so I don't see why a proper OS-driven system can't manage what a ancient siemens can.

flywheel

true there are a lot of devices out there that can handle it - palms, pocket pcs - but each os is different - if it was one of the factors that delayed the P800 it looks like they had to develop a workaround - maybe nokia decided the extra dev time needed to work it into the N-Gage (series 60) would push shipping dates out too long / costs up?

BrianG

The Corinthian

A review of the N-Gage by our very own Shinji (or so I'm told).