John Gillooly pretends he's Jean-Luc Picard and N-Gages the next generation.
Nokia's N-Gage is a considerably well featured mobile phone and a decent enough gaming platform, yet it will be forever remembered as 'the Taco', thanks to its awkward and goofy looking sideways talking feature. While this is certainly functional, it is a very uncomfortable way to talk and also a nightmare if you are trying to talk in a crowd, or under the fuzz of poor reception.
So it is unsurprising that Nokia has taken the criticisms onboard and designed a second type of NGage, the N-Gage QD. This is a smaller sized phone that drops some of the features of the NGage and improves on others. Most importantly it can be held flat to the head when talking, but it also brings the ability to change the game MMC cards without removing the battery. It also features a long better battery life; a redesigned keypad and a brighter screen.
These are all very welcome, especially the new keypad, which has a better layout for games like Tony Hawk, however the omitted functions have caused some head scratching around a few at the Atomic office.
Gone are the digital radio and MP3 player. Also gone is the ability to hook up to a PC via USB (PC connectivity is now through Bluetooth only or via an MMC card and reader).
Considering the much more user friendly nature of the QD, and the ability to swap memory cards easily, it makes little sense to drop these features. The first model NGage is still the better featured offering. If you ignore the fact these are missing, the N-Gage QD is an eminently more user friendly phone.
It still suffers from some rather quirky software design (for some reason the clock settings are still in 'Extras', while things like setup and call log come under 'Tools'), and the screen's lack of peripheral vision is frustrating on all but a handful of games. For day to day use it is more than adequate, especially considering the low price tag attached to it.
But despite the fact that the library of games for N-Gage is growing, as a gaming platform it is soon to be usurped in performance by the next generation of phones using hardware 3D accelerators.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012