Original N-Gage

Here's another one from the "drafts" pile from 2019 that I wanted to do a little write-up about, but...well it got lost in the blogging shuffle 😂. My original intent with this series of looking back at older tech was to talk a bit about the specs and the general reception, but since there are enough blogs, wikis, and YouTubers who already do that, why add to the chorus?  So, I decided that I'll just give my two cents on these devices.

Thi particular walk down memory lane is courtesy of Nokia's N-Gage duo. The original N-Gage was a neat idea at the time (2003). The only way you could play portable games at the time were on a PSP or a Nindendo DS (or older portable gaming consoles), but who wants multiple devices in their pockets?! The device ran the Series60 Symbian operating system, which meant that they could also run other PDA-style applications that were available on Nokia S60 phones.  The device was really half-baked though. The microphone and speaker were on the side of the device, which made it awkward to use, and in order to play games on cartridge (how they sold them back then, before appstores and quick downloads over wifi/wireless carrier), was to remove the battery and reset the device. 🤦‍♂️ Having to reboot your phone to change a game is a major failure.  The QD (second generation N-Gage), did fix things, but I think that mobile gaming of this sort wasn't ready for prime time.  Furthermore, other S60 devices could play the N-Gage games, seeing as their ran the same OS, so all you had to do was get a copy of the SIS file and play it on your N95 or other S60 phone.  Cool attempt, but poor execution IMO.

N-Gage QD