Nokia N-Gage

Also known as the Taco in its original format, featuring interesting design choices such as side-talkin' (holding the phone edgeways to the face to make a phone call). The N-Gage is Nokia's first serious attempt at a games phone and features additional api functions to prevent the running of N-Gage specific MMC based games on other Series 60 devices. The N-Gage is a fully featured smartphone - not just a connected games machine - and all the usual Must Have Apps for Series 60 run on the N-Gage.

The cuddlier N-Gage QD has a very similar feature set to the classic original device, the significant omissions being:

• No FM radio
• No hardware support for MP3 playing, and a mono headset socket
• No USB connector for using the MMC device as a removable drive on a PC

However the QD does gain the following features over the N-Gage classic:

• Larger capacity battery
• Smaller plan factor (but slightly thicker)
• Hot swapable MMC cards

All About N-Gage and the official N-Gage site are the top sites to follow. There are a wide selection of native games, many java games, and a colossal number of games supported by the various emulators - want to play a specific console game? The chances are it's available.

As a nice technology demonstrator, the freely available Snakes takes some beating - the classic Nokia snake with a 3D twist, with bluetooth multiplayer, some challenging levels and the ability to send the game over bluetooth to another nearby N-Gage, and if Snakes doesn't light your candle, how about Doom (another Doom port)?

Want cheap N-Gage games? N-Gage.com now has all the first party games available for download at 9.99 Euro each.

There are other Specific Phones in the Series 60 range.