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Second Coming of the N-Gage:

N-Gage QD

Nokia’s N-Gage was kicked, spat on and ridiculed by the collective pens of game journalists around North America. It was cited as bulky with mushy controls. It didn’t help that you had to disassemble it to swap games and it just felt funny to use it as a phone (in public, at least). Nokia could have just washed their hands of the device and moved on. But they didn’t. Instead Nokia actually listened to those criticisms, went back to the drawing board, and made their engineers work overtime to address those criticisms.

The result of all that hard work is the N-Gage QD.

The QD apparently doesn’t actually stand for anything – it’s used merely to denote the model of N-Gage, like Nintendo’s GameBoy Advance SP – but it could be short for “quality device.” The list of improvements of the regular N-Gage is quite long so it’s hard to pick one particular aspect that stands out as “the most important.”

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From a gaming standpoint, the most important change is that the QD sports a hot-swappable multimedia (MMC) slot. It has a fancy name but basically it means you don’t have to take the unit apart to swap games – it’s along the lines of cartridge-based systems. Instead of navigating a bunch of menus, you can setup the unit to automatically start the game when the game card is inserted. The

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directional pad has been improved, but to what extent remains to be seen – Nokia will be at E3 with units on-hand so I’ll wait until then to pass judgment on the improved controls. The screen, while remaining the same size, is brighter.

According to Nokia the battery life has been improved, too. This is a good thing because you might actually want to use the QD as a phone. Not only is the QD smaller than the original model, it features a more traditional cell phone configuration when it comes to the speaker and microphone for “classic talking.” So instead of being self-conscious as you talk into the edge of a metallic taco (with the regular N-Gage), you can feel like you’re using a phone. While the byproduct may mean earwax on the keypad, it’s a small price to pay.

The short of it is, is that although the QD will look different and have slightly different features over the base N-Gage, the hardware remains largely untouched. Also untouched for the most part is the selling price, which is still in the $200US range (depending on contracts, etc).

Games are still coming to the N-Gage, with more publishers putting support behind the project. I’m told that there’s a drive to get many of the upcoming games to utilize the multiplayer (via Bluetooth wireless technology) and online possibilities of the QD, with an emphasis on making access to N-Gage Arena easier and faster.

Things are suddenly looking up for the Nokia. With Nintendo and Sony both bringing new handheld gaming devices to market in the near future, Nokia’s N-Gage QD looks to compete on its own terms. At the very least, Nokia has redeemed itself by listening to gamers and actually doing something with that information.

- Omni

(April 18, 2004)


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