The N-Gage was a cellphone and handheld gaming platform, released by Nokia in 2003. It was supposed to be a competitor to Nintendo's Gameboy Advance, but was unsuccessful because of it's clumsy design. Today the N-Gage brand is used for Nokias mobile gaming serivce, availiable for the company's N-Series phones.

N-Gage Classic

The original version of the N-Gage. It had some big design flaws, that made the gaming and calling aspects of the phone clumsy.

The original N-Gage

Critisms:

• The battery had to be removed to switch games.

• The speaker and microphone was on the side of the phone. To make calls you had to hold the phone up to your head like a taco.
• The screen orientation was unusual for a gaming system (vertical instead of horizontal). 

N-Gage QD

The N-Gage QD was released six months after the original N-Gage, and improved many of the flaws found in the previous device.

N-Gage QD

Differences:

• New revamped look.
• Games could be switched without removing the battery.
• The earpiece was moved to the front of the device.
• No suppport for MP3 playback.

White screen of death

The N gage QD also had a memory problem known has the white screen of death, the white screen of death became a serious problem with many users has it was easy to get the problem. The problem was that if the internal memory on the phone (3 MB) had been fully used up, then the phone would start using memory from the phones Ram. This meant that the phone would no longer have enough memory to start up the phone or even open the main menu to delete the files taking up the memory. Once this problem occurs if you turn off the N gage then it will no longer work, when turned back on the N gage would show a white screen and stay that way until the phone was switched off, now known has the white screen of death. Another problem with this was that there was and still isnt anyway to fix the N gage after getting the white screen of death, the only known way of fixing is for it to be sent to an official Nokia store.

N gage Arena

The N gage also fully supported online play with some games, N gage arena allowed players to play people wherever they were with no wi-fi connectivity at all.

Tiger Woods fully supported online

However N gage Arena had problems, such has having to register with your network provider, which was a problem has some networks did not allow N gage Arena despite working on the N gage console. Arena also suffered from lag problems and slow down and was sadly never used by many players, meaning that the people who did play on N gage Arena could rarely find another player to play with, however Nokia still even today supports N gage Arena in some countries (such has UK) and still works just has good has it originaly did.

Piracy

The N gage also had problems with piracy, mainly becouse how simple it was and how the N gage console had a complete lack of pirated games. N gage games were all written on MMC card, with all files shown not hidden, this was a huge mistake by Nokia has it made copying games has simple as copying and pasting especialy when many games were has small has 20 MB
All that was required was an memory card reader, and a blank MMC card and anybody could simply copy a game then paste it onto another memory card, quickly many users did this, causing N gage game sales to sink even lower, however still Nokia did nothing about piracy and eventualy never did.
Homebrew programs also became very popular with the N gage has it was a symbian phone, becouse it was a symbion phone it allowed people to run many homebrew aplications on it, today many programs such has Game boy advance and Sega Megadrive emulators can run on N gage consoles even MP3 players on the N gage QD can be run via homebrew.

N-Gage today

The New N-Gage service

Nokia dropped the idea of combining cellphones with handheld gaming devices. In 2008 Nokia released a mobile gaming service, under the N-Gage brand. This service is only available on certain Nokia N-Series phones, and resembles Microsoft's Xbox Live, with additions like N-Gage points, and gamerprofiles.

The new N-Gage platform doesn't use catridges like the previous N-Gage devices. That means there is no backwards compability.

N-Gage - Recent Games

		Name	Platforms	Developer
		Catan released on May 2, 2007	NGE, XBLM	Big Huge Games
		Asphalt: Urban GT 2 released on Nov. 14, 2006	PSP, NGE, DS	Gameloft S.A.
		Xyanide released on Aug. 15, 2006	XBOX, GBA, NGE	Playlogic Game Factory BV
		Warhammer 40,000: Glory in Death released on April 6, 2006	NGE	Razorback Developments Ltd
		Pathway to Glory: Ikusa Islands	NGE	RedLynx Ltd
		High Seize	NGE	RedLynx Ltd
		X-Men: Legends II - Rise of Apocalypse released on Sept. 20, 2005	GC, PC, PS2, PSP, XBOX, NGE	Vicarious Visions, Raven Software, Barking Lizards Technologies, SuperVillain Studios, Inc., Beenox Studios
		Rifts: Promise of Power released on Sept. 10, 2005	NGE	Backbone Entertainment
		SSX Out of Bounds	GIZ, NGE	EA Canada, Exient Entertainment
		Xanadu Next	PC, NGE	Nihon Falcom Corp.
		Glimmerati released on April 16, 2005	NGE	Bugbear Entertainment Ltd.
		Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory released on March 23, 2005	GC, PC, PS2, XBOX, NGE, DS, XBLM	Ubisoft Montreal Studios
		The King of Fighters Extreme released on Jan. 12, 2005	NGE	Hudson Entertainment, Inc.
		Pathway to Glory released on Nov. 29, 2004	NGE	RedLynx Ltd
		The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey released on Nov. 23, 2004	NGE	TKO Software
		Asphalt: Urban GT released on Nov. 21, 2004	NGE, DS	Gameloft S.A.
		Colin McRae Rally 2005 released on Nov. 15, 2004	PC, PS2, PSP, XBOX, MAC, NGE	Ideaworks3D, Ltd.
		FIFA Soccer 2005	GC, PS1, PC, PS2, XBOX, GIZ, GBA, NGE	EA Canada
		Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm released on Aug. 24, 2004	PS2, NGE	Gameloft S.A.
		Spider-Man 2 released on June 28, 2004	GC, PC, PS2, PSP, XBOX, MAC, GBA, NGE, DS	Aspyr Media, Inc., Vicarious Visions, Digital Eclipse Software, Inc., Backbone Entertainment, Treyarch, Fizz Factor, The

N-Gage - Upcoming Games

		Name	Platform	Developer