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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?
Wow, the rate of technological progress these days is amazing. I mean, wasn't it just last year that everyone was excited about HO-gauge Nokias?
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
you know they have e-book roms for that.. http://www.gameboy-advance.net
...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.
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 --> .
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
not even on my radar without nethack... :)
Thats right, they all have a microprocessor, some buttons, and an LCD, and take batteries! Whats the real difference between an iPod and a pocket PC with a big microdrive? Not a lot.
And furthermore, what do all of THESE devices have in common?
Thats right, they have ALL of the same traits as the aforementioned devices, with the addition of an RF DSP chip. Again, a lot of overlap
So whats my point? Sure you could carry one of each of these devices, but do you have enough pocket room? Or room on your belt? Do you want to fuck around with all those batteries and no convenient way to interface the devices to each other? You COULD merge all of these devices into one single SUPER DEVICE.
Sound crazy? It's not. A PocketPC already can do most of this stuff. MP3s (DiVx to boot), games, PIM, whatever other software you want. They've already squeezed cell phones into pocket pc's without adding any (significant) bulk. There's no reason why the same DSP chip that is used to modem the cellphone signal couldn't be used to also demodulate FM broadcast, GPS signals, etc, all just by running a different program. That is the beauty of DSP. Yeah you might need to switch in and out some final amplifier or mixer stages but thats easy enough and it can all be integrated into a single chip with only a few external components. SHit they already have ham radios that are smaller than some cellphones that operate on 50mhz, 144mhz, 440mhz, and 1.2ghz. If THAT isn't a wide frequency range then I don't know what is.
So my point is there is no TECHNICAL reason NOT to integrate the HELL out of devices. There are many practical reasons why integrated devices rule.
Will this ever happen? Of course not. Well then again, insert $10M and I'll make it. Does anyone want to fund my startup?
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com