N-Gage comes to Eseries: Nokia announces the E55 and E75

[Tzer2]

Two new N-Gage devices has been announced, the Nokia E55 and E75, which will be the first Eseries devices to include the platform. The client should be built into the phones' firmware, and people will be able to use the platform straight out of the box.

Read on in the full article.

[Kazutoyo]

E55 is sort of a thin, fast, good looking N78. 3.2 MP camera, GPS, S60 3rd FP2, Wi-Fi, N-Gage, candybar and so on, and neither of them have TV-out, 3D acceleration or xenon flash.

Really like the device, and will probably buy it, but I can't help to wonder how long it will take until we see a thin N82 in the E-series? That would be my ultimate device for many years to come

[Tzer2]

I think they're both intended as mid-range devices, for people who want some advanced features but don't want to spend too much. Nokia's chief Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said in the speech today that they consider "Eseries" to stand for "Efficiency", especially now that the world is in recession.

Regarding the phones announced today, not many people have noticed this but the E55, 6710 and 6720 all have 600 mhz processors, which is much faster than most current S60 devices. That should allow software graphics rendering to be much smoother than on current N-Gage phones.

[Kazutoyo]

Originally Posted by Tzer2

Regarding the phones announced today, not many people have noticed this but the E55, 6710 and 6720 all have 600 mhz processors, which is much faster than most current S60 devices. That should allow software graphics rendering to be much smoother than on current N-Gage phones.

Yeah, that's one thing I really like with them, hence the "fast" comment Can't wait to see if it's fast enough to handle AntSNES with sound emulation! That is, when it start to support sound emulation, heh. Would love to see UAE ported to S60 and see how it runs too.

I'm sure the extra speed will be very useful!

[Tzer2]

I'd forgotten about emulation, you're right that a faster CPU could help emulators a lot.

A lot of 16-bit games are well-suited to a phone screen, it would be nice to see more of them.

[jal12]

E55 seems to be very interesting phone! I'm just wondering how fast you can write with that kind of keyboard. If typing is fast enough, this could be my next phone.

[Tzer2]

Originally Posted by jal12

E55 seems to be very interesting phone! I'm just wondering how fast you can write with that kind of keyboard. If typing is fast enough, this could be my next phone.

When they announced the phone, Nokia's executive said that their research had shown this was the fastest type of phone keypad.

I can't comment on that because I've never tried one, but Sony Ericsson did do several models using a similar "semi-QWERTY" layout.

It's predictive, but because it has more keys it should be more accurate than predictive on a normal keypad.