Now now, i’m not being biased here, but after using the N-Gage QD for over six months now, I have come to the conclusion that it’s a better phone than its predecessor in many ways, also for the price it retails, there’s no other device in the market that can beat it if compared point to point.
Coming to the phone itself, the looks of the phone is right up there in the middle of the aesthetics department.
You either hate it or love it.. having used the earlier N-gage, the normal talkin mode is a welcome change. The side talking idea was one of the most embarassing things one could do in public...unless you’re the flashy kind!
Lets have a look at some of the things this phone is capable of:
The phone runs on the Symbian OS (Series 60 version 6.1) which means this is a smartphone capable doing things ’’normal’’ phones can’t even think of!
Gaming:
This is a well known fact that the phone is excellent for game playing. Apart from the big games which comes in a seperate mmc there are a multitude of games which can be downloaded from the net easily. And i’m talking about good games not simple kiddie style games.
Some of the games I like are Motoracer, Micro Pool, Snakes3D, NFS Underground (yeah!!), Movistar racing, Agile Fighter, Midtown Madness (microsoft certified game!!)
There are virtually thousands of game titles out there..one just need to look properly!
Smartphone Capabilities:
Believe it or not, this phone can be a serious work phone and office work.
The office suite Quick Office has an inbuilt word processor, Spreadsheet and powerpoint applications...also there is PDFplus, the pdf files reader..for swf files, there is the mini macromedia flash player.
Profimail and active mail are two email clients available for the phone. I have successfuly used profimail with my gmail account...works like a charm!
Then there are the browsers for web browsing. Currently three browsers are available for the Ngage. Netfront, Opera and Doris Browser. Netfront is the best among these..but opera is good for downloading stuff. Doris browser is good, but is quite outdated.
Then the chat clients, u can chat with your icq. yahoo and msn buddies using agile messenger..i recently heard that agile is gonna be charged but its working without problems for me for free!
For IRC buffs, there’s the wIRC client...works just like mIRC!
Absense of an FM radio can be temporarily be forgiven because there a couple of streaming radio clients for the ngage..like virgin radio and virtual radio.
For movie buffs there’s the smartmovie player which plays .avi files With a converter that comes with it u can convert a full movie in to a 120mb file that can be easily loaded onto an mmc for your viewing pleasure!
I wont recommend an mp3 player because the phone can’t play stereo and the sound quality leaves a lot to be desired, but if you really like your music, get oggplayer, convert your mp3s to ogg and then load it on the mmc. a 4 mb mp3 file will be lessthan halved when converted to ogg without significant loss in quality. I currently have 60 songs loaded!
Connectivity:
I don’t know why the folks at nokia decided to remove cable support to this phone, which also without infrared leaves only one connectivity option:Bluetooth.
With a bluetooth dongle, you can easily connect it to a pc for syncing contacts and other stuff. I also use the phone as modem for my pc.
A memory card reader is recommended as it is way faster than bluetooth for file transfers. They cost less than 400 bucks!
Phone Functions:
Ooops, I almost forget this is a phone! This has all the basic phone functions. The voice clarity is great and reception is not bad either.
There are various apps for call manging like call cheater and blacklist which can be quite useful in certain circumstances.
Overall:
For the price this phone retails I can assure that no other phone even comes close, but the N-gage requires its users to be bit technically oriented as it is a smartphone.
If your requirement is a basic call and sms device, this is not for you!
For smartphone buffs on a budget, GO GET IT!!