Introduction

There are a lot of products out there that try to combine different areas of technology into one product. I have found that more often then not this attempt ends up backfiring, and results in two products that would have been better off purchasing individually rather then buying the all inclusive product.

Well today we had the privilege to check out a product that tries to combine the growing cell phone market with the widely growing video game market. The Nokia N-Gage QD tries to improve upon the original N-Gage model, and still offer both products in one. So is this the product that you should be asking Santa for this holiday season? Read our full review to find out!

Features

• Large, high resolution, active matrix color display (176x208 pixels) with 4096 colors.
• Games optimized controller on left side of display and numeric keypad and highlighted game action buttons on right side.
• More compact, yet solid in the hand.
• Hot swap MMC-card slot as external memory.
• Front oriented phone, no more annoying "side-talking"!
• Longer battery life.
• Dual-band (two variants: GSM850/1900, GSM 900/1800).
• Separate OK-key for selecting in menus.
• Games autostart when Game Card is inserted.
• One-key game start with OK-key in standby mode.
• N-Gage Arena launcher application built-in.

Design

Now I have to admit to you all that I never went out and purchased the Nokia N-Gage, because I had heard to many negatives about that initial design that just made it sound like an unworthy product. So I waited and when I heard about the QD coming out, I must say that this one definitely sounded a lot more appealing then the previous one. With the previous N-Gage looking like a taco and having to remove its parts to put games in, itÕs no wonder that Nokia releases the QD to fix the problems and improve other areas of the design as well.

First and foremost, the change of the placement of the speaker and microphone was probably one of the more appreciated and noticeable change. This is crucial as they were moved from the very awkward and embarrassing taco position to the much more natural feel of a cell phone. With this the also made the N-Gage a lot smaller then the previous one, as it is not only smaller but also seems much more natural when using it as a cell phone. Although this cell phone is still rather larger then most of the ones on the market right now, it is still a huge improvement from the previous version.

The screen of the N-Gage in my opinion wasnÕt as big as I thought it was going to be, and to me it seemed a little cramped on the device. I think they needed to not so much double the size of the screen, but just expand it a little more then it is and that would really be perfect. With that being said, the buttons (which are of course numbers) are nicely placed on the N-Gage. Although they are not that easy at first to press down but I saw that after sometime they became more comfortable to use.

The overall design of the QD is of course much improved from the previous unit. You can now see that they really spent a lot more time listening to the consumers and make this much more like a cell phone that also play games instead of the other way around. You can see from the design that this was a great choice, especially compared to the first N-Gage.

Testing

Now of course the whole idea behind reviewing this unit was to see how the unit actually performed during normal tasks. With that in mind, I am going to not only critique this unit not only as a game device, but also as a cell phone and vice versa. One thing I noticed right away even before I put a game into the QD was that this device didnÕt have any built in games. I mean this being mainly a gaming cell phone, you would think that the N-Gage would have some games like my cell phone, which is actually a business cell phone, so that sort of surprised me. The device however does have normal cell phone applications like calendar and phone book, but nothing really out of the ordinary.

I have to say that just using this device on a normal day-to-day basis was really a nice thing, but not something that was like wow this is awesome. It was more like this is a neat little device. Using this device as a cell phone was definitely not my favorite, but I guess if you can compromise that you do get a gaming device as well.

I of course testing the QD with some games as well and found that the results were pretty impressive, although it took sometime for me to get used to them. I was impressed that the visuals on the N-Gage were actually pretty good and a good improvement over the Gameboy Advanced. The screen had a very nice display, which hosted a very bright and colorful and for me I thought it worked perfectly for this device. To me my only complaint with the QD was that it did feel a bit awkward using it at first, but once you get the control scheme down the device works pretty nicely.

Overall: 8.0/10

You know I used this device quite a bit and I just felt that although this was a nice device, it just seemed a little to big and not enough solid features to make this a must have item. However if you donÕt mind a bit larger cell phone to have a gaming device with you as well, then this is exactly what the QD was made for. For me I just felt like I would rather carry around two devices that do there individual process great rather then have a device that does two things pretty good. With that being said like I said if you donÕt mind using a device that is a little bit bigger and may not have all the features, then the Nokia N-Gage QD is a great purchase for you!