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Bluetooth-enabled devices must include an easy hardware switch which allows the convenient shutting off of Bluetooth functionality. An indicator light displaying the current status must also be included on the device. Devices like the Tapwave Zodiac are well designed and include these features.

And the reason they're announcing this so early is of course that Nokia is scared that the Zodiac will lure people away from them.

The Tapwave has more games that will be available than the article makes it sound. I would really like one, but the price needs to come down by about $100 for me to buy one. I would consider it an upgrade/replacement for my current Palm that can also play good games and act as an MP3 player (I don't currently have). It looks like something that I would actually use on a daily basis. Like the N-Gage was supposed to be, but is not.

Could a *verb* not be too far behind?!

As in: "They are going to Linux (kill off commercially) the product." ?

I just want a Linux port for my Zodiac, when I get it...

NO KIDDING. I thought it might be a kinda nifty gadget if I didn't want to carry my GBA SP, but holy crap. I'd never talk on that thing.

For those that don't get it, to talk on this behemoth without a hands-free of some sort, you hold the NARROW TOP EDGE to your head, and the screen points the same direction as your head does. A pair of these and you could go out as Dumbo this year. Combine that with the dismal launch titles and the fact that you have to disassemble the phone to change games, and this is just one poorly-thought-out design decision after another.

Hopefully the Zodiac is a better PDA that this appears to be a phone.

I may be missing something here, but if I design and manufacture a device with a specific purpose in mind, and then add-on other features, the true nature of the device is whatever the heck I say it is.

Nokia says it's a gaming device. That's what they designed it to be. But at the cost, it just doesn't compete with anything on the market.

There are plenty of other ways to satisfy your gaming/audio/video/cell phone fix, most of which have a bigger screen and don't require partial disassembly for changing games. A Palm-device with a cell-phone attachment springs to mind, for instance. And for $300, you could easily get a mid-to-high level model and a few snazzy gizmos to boot.

The N-gage is not going to generate positive buzz, no matter which audience it gets pitched to. I'm honestly surprised that EBGames has seen fit to showcase demo units in their stores, although it does work as a great deterrant to wasting large amounts of money.

Actual quote: "Wow, I was going to get one of those things. Dude, that screen sucks!"

Hopefully, this will once and for all prove that you simply can't buy good press and have it work for any lasting period of time.

I await the Zodiac.

The Zodiac is poised to become the next big homebrew device. Many GP32 programmers are already looking at it as it is also based on an ARM9 CPU, but has many more features.

It costs a little more up front but its ability to act as a PDA and its design out do the GP32 on all fronts.

Give it a look see and check out Zodiac Gamer for a good deal of info.

I myself just got a GBA SP, and am loving it. Haven't had this much fun since the original SNES (DC comes close). Just wish it was a lil bigger, too small for my hands.

and what's the zodiac? mashed potatoes?

The GP32 and the forthcoming Zodiac are both excellent homebrew handhelds.

The Tapwave is really just a Palm designed for gaming.

Read up on them, many emu's came out for the GP32 and the Zodiac promises much of the same. It will most likely have full speed SNES and Genesis before long. Givens are NES, TG16, ATARI, GB/GBC, and possibly MAME and Neo-Geo.

This startup company is about to release a PDA that also has allows you to play cool games, like Doom 2 or Duke Nukem. If you want something expensive, buy the version with 128 MB, that sells for $ 400.

zodiac

It's a PalmOS device that's been optimized for playing games. Since it is a Palm device, you can play Palm games on it, and they are also coming out with Zodiac optimized games. Oh, and it has all those PDA features he could want, too.

You could also get him a Samsung Yopy:

Yopy

Check out these games!. I think I may have found my next Palm handheld.

Now that all of the obvious reasons for the N-Gage to fail have been covered in great depth (price, crap games, crap screen, poor phone talking design, crap media, need to take out the battery to change game etc.). I'd like to add another, slightly less obvious one, that I think might be far harder to fix when (if) Nokia ever get their act together: Nokia treat developers badly.

The N-Gage, as a games programming platform is a nightmare when compared to almost every similar platform. The operating system (Symbian 6.1) has all of the (over-)protective security features that you would find in a 'fully-blown' operating system (memory protection, HAL etc.) but none of the API's that are normally found in such environments to allow low-level access to the hardware that games need (such as DirectX).

While there are lots of work-arounds and blatant hacks for doing all these kinds of things, most of the API's involved are poorly documented (if they are documented at all) and coders spend alot of their time trying to fool the OS, when they should be making games. In addition to this Symbian is an OS with a fairly ridgid coding style and alot of it's own unique methodologies and conventions. These are often incompatible with existing codebases (in a standard Symbian application, which is in effect a dll, you cannot create global variables!) and developers existing work practices.

When compared to PalmOS, WindowsCE and the GBA the 'learning curve' that's required to put a game out on the N-Gage is pretty steep. Although it may be more geared towards gaming than any existing Palm or CE device, remember that the helix is on it's way (eventually) and there is already a large homebrew game development community associated with the PalmOS platform.

In addition to this Nokia provide no real technical support on any of these issues, there are no example workarounds or anything. And the existing homebrew Symbian developers are unfriendly, insular and unhelpful when compared to their PalmOS or GBA counterparts. The symbian documentation itself doesn't cover anything that is N-Gage specific. In fact, the first on-device debugger for the platform was only released recently, and by metrowerks. The SDK's available from Nokia have no on-platform debugger.

In short, even if the N-Gage was a really well put together platform, which people really wanted to buy and then pay more money for games on it, I still think that it would be a long time before a decent set of quality titles made an appearance.

Nokia can keep getting publishers to port existing titles to the platform (and I'd like to know exactly which way the money changes hands on a deal like that), but they'll never get any decent original IP on the platform until they start treating developers better. Of course, none of it really matters, as it's not going to sell, but when the N-Gage 2 or 3 or 9909 or whatever get's it right, then I'm sure that this will become an issue.

If you want to do business stuff (such as Internet, in this case), get a Palm Pilot or something.

Apparently Palm Pilot (well, Palm OS) is for games too. See This story on a forthcoming PalmOS-based gaming device from Tapwave. It's also expected to have all of Palm OS' usual PIM applications. But it's not due for at least another six months, and the fact that its specifications are better than most high-end Palm OS devices out now gives a suggestion of vapourware.

Soon there'll be another way to fake a hard day at the office.

New mobile entertainment platform based on the Palm OS, enhanced with advanced gaming and entertainment features

Fathammer X-Forge 3D Game Engine
Fathammer X-Forge Core APIs