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Nokia's Cellular GBA - The N-Gage

Posted by chrisd on from the hope-it-has-a-better-backlight dept.

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."

4 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. My two biggest concerns... by CommandNotFound · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...are price, and battery life. Neither of which were addressed on this web page. 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? There were a couple of those deluxe handhelds out in the early 90's)

    The GameBoy has survived because it's cheap and the battery life lasts forever (well, an impressively long time, at least). That, and the Mario/Zelda/Pokemon franchises.

  2. I was lucky enough to have a play with one by rcs1000 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I got to see one last Friday when the nice boys from Eidos came to my office, and I can say it is a lot more impressive than the GBA.

    Height- and width-wise, it's about the same, but it feels a lot slimmer, which was a surprise to me as I'd been expecting something like Nokia's ill-fated 5510. It also seemed pretty light.

    It also has a very nice high-res back-lit screen. It sure blew my GBA away.

    Now, this doesn't mean it'll win the handheld console war. There is the question of price: can it compete with a $100 GBA? And then there are game; Eidos, THQ, Sega and Activision are (reasonably) big names, but they are not Nintendo.

    That said, it will be useful indeed to see the Big N get some competition.

    --
    --- My dad's political betting
  3. 104 MHz should be enough by yerricde · · Score: 3, Interesting

    104mhz arm?

    Doom 1 runs at 120x120 pixels with a good frame rate on the 16.78 MHz ARM7TDMI processor in the GBA. If you want to see what even that slow speed (one-sixth of what the N-Gage has) can do, check out some of the GBA demos from Assembly '02.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  4. Likes and dislikes by eyefish · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Likes:

    - The bluetooth wireless gaming will be AWESOME (I can already imagine finding people on the streets, airports, bus, trains and playing with them with no cables).

    - Integration of gaming, radio, mp3, agenda, sound recorder, cell phone, address book and [limited] internet is a HUGE plus (will this be the future of PDAs?)

    - Ability to play Java games.

    Dislikes:

    - The screen resolution is a joke.

    - No camera.

    - No Palm OS compatibility.

    - Size (I'd have made the unit as wide as the screen itself, and then make the screen larger to the sides, and to save space have the joypad or the keypad slide out from underneath.

    Overall, if the price is right (under US$200) I'll buy it.