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Nokia's Cellular GBA - The N-Gage
An anonymous reader writes "Hold on to your Game Boys, folks! It appears that the Finland cell phone manufacturer, Nokia, will be throwing in its lot in the handheld gaming industry with its N-Gage. Not only is this critter capable of playing games, but other noticeable features include a cell phone, radio, and MP3 player. Game companies such as Sega, Taito, and Eidos have already expressed support for it."
It's been delayed until fall. They didn't mention that did they?
Well, just by registering to forum.nokia.com you can download the SDK kits (the Symbian kit uses gcc even :) or order them on CD and the SDK CD is free, though they took some time to deliver them.
- Raynet --> .
Ok, I found the 'Tech Spex'. I hate misspelled hipster talk.
Anyways.
Still no meat.. Just a vague "High performance mobile interactive gaming" line and some more marketing type buzzwords.
Is "Stereo FM radio" still technically impressive?
Oh yeah, no mention of OGG and "Requires Windows 98, Windows ME, or Windows 2000 professional, Windows XP"
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
N-Gage specs
And back to Excellent for me!
I have been pwned because my
Check the developer's page. There's a freely downloadable SDK.
If it's $200 and lasts three hours on a battery charge, then we've probably got another Lynx. (is that what is was called?
Believe it or not, display tech has progressed since the early 1990s.. The Lynx IIRC had a backlit passive color screen, while the even hoggier portable turbografx had a TFT. Lynx could run about 4-5 hours on a full nicad charge on its 6 AAs.
I owned both the original and extra crispy, and I was a big fan of both, until I 'got a life'..
I would definitely appreciate a phone with improved games, if only to pass the time on the ferry.. I can get seasick reading..
The N-Gage FAQ says that it will support GSM/GPRS for multiplayer gaming in addition to Bluetooth.
According to the specs on Gamepsot the batterylife is 3-6 hours. So in reality would be like 1-4 hours in real world usage. That is too damn short, considering that the Gameboy advance claims 30 hours on two AAs(only around 20 hours in realworld usage).
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Considering that you can buy GBAs for around $70 and pretty soon the new back-lit lithium-ion GBA SP for $99, the Nokia better be priced to competitively or the consumer would just go out and buy a PocketPC or Palm device; considering that Capcom, Sega,and Verant are already producing games for those platforms (like Everquest, 1942, Section Z, Colomns, Ultima Undrworld, Simcity, etc.).
Link to Gamespot;
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/n
http://www.n-gage.com/n-gage/gd_tech_spex.html
Some random quotes:
- Full email support (IMAP4, POP3, SMTP, MIME2)
- Tri-band EGSM 900/GSM1800/GSM 1900
- Bluetooth
- Slave USB 1.1. for digital music download from PC
- 64 MB memory card for music
http://press.nokia.com/PR/200302/890630_5.html
Usage times:
- Games up to 3 - 6 h (depending on game type)
- Talk up to 2 - 4 h
- Standby up to 150- 200 h
- Music up to 8 h
- Radio up to 20 h
The N-Gage is a Series 60 phone, like the 7650. That means it runs the SYmbian OS, which is a new generation of a PDA OS for Psion PDAs. It is a real OS, but optimized for phone-usage. Outside developers have already written the module to shut off the phone part while leaving other parts of the software running.
If this capability isn't included in the phone outright -- and I'll be stunned if it isn't -- I am sure you will be able to download it from places like handango.com.
The GBA's specs are actually pretty awful compared to what was possible for a $100 device when it was released.
It has a 32-bit mutant (ARM/THUMB) processor running at 16.78MHz. The processor's THUMB mode is actually 16bit, and is used extensively because the instructions are smaller and the data bus is only 16 bits wide anyway.
Ram is critically low (only 288kb work ram, 32kb of which is inside the processor), so every byte counts. Moving data across the 16bit bus in 32bit mode would just be a waste, as well. You have to wait two cycles to get 32 bits of data no matter what you do. The cpu's 32bit mode is basically only used when working purely in RAM, which is scarce enough that 32bit mode isn't as common as you'd expect.
You'll find some beautiful and engaging games and demos for the GBA, but their technical merit is not the result of powerful hardware. It's due to very clever and efficient code.
At the same time, you'll find a lot of abysmally terrible games (the bulk of the GBA library, really). In these, the game design and code is not very clever and far from efficient.
In fact, Novell came up with the name earlier than Nokia did.
Novell Ngage
Sigged!