"Be in no doubt that the N-Gage is a failure. And it's not a failure of ideas - it's a failure of implementation, support and addressing the needs of the consumer. And as Nokia's first foray into a software and service bites the dust, they'd better learn the lessons of N-Gage pretty quickly."

Read on

Nokia's Press Release on the subject says:

During a routine quality control process, Nokia identified a potential product quality issue with certain chargers manufactured by one of its third-party suppliers. The plastic covers of the affected chargers could come loose and separate, exposing the charger's internal components and potentially posing an electrical shock hazard if certain internal components are touched while the charger is plugged into a live socket. Nokia is not aware of any incidents or injuries related to these chargers.

The full release can be found here.

In this podcast we cover:    

• Q3 Smartphone figures from Canalys
   
• Fujitsu and Quic join the board of the Symbian Foundation
  
  
• SEE 2009 retrospective and media reaction (Rafe rants a bit)
    
• N97 v20 firmware comments and thoughts from Steve
   
  
• Closure on N-Gage - thoughts and comments from Ewan and Steve

Read on

N-Gage

(aka the Next Generation Gaming Platform)
Died aged 6 of neglect and misunderstanding,
October 30th 2009, Helsinki, Finland.

Born October 7 2003, Helsinki, Finland to a proud parent company, Nokia, the N-Gage had a difficult birth as it struggled to overcome physical defects that, while revolutionary in vision, left many people wondering what had happened during the design and testing period of the initial handset – concerns that would be repeated throughout the life of N-Gage.

I've made mistakes and its no disgrace,
the final page that I can't erase
even though I look back on my past,
could have loved you more could have made it last
Time has changed me I hope you'll see,
no one could bring your love to me
The fork in the road looks more like a knife,
when the cards have been dealt and pains in your life
my time has come there ringing the bell,
so long my love, goodbye and farewell.

Lost Love, by T. P. O'Connell

The full obituary can be read here.

"What's interesting about this title is who's behind it. Firemint are well known for their titles on the iPhone platform, including the smash hit Flight Control. So to have them behind an N-Gage title should be something that Nokia would want everyone to know – yet the game comes out with little fanfare, apparently at the end of the life of the Next Gen system."

Read on

"My worry for the official N-Gage version of the title was that EA would just take the 700K Java game and tack on a few N-Gage screens and options. The Java game's playable, you see, but it's never smooth or slick and there are few luxury trappings. The good news is that this is a native Symbian port, developed by Gamelion and weighs in at 6MB, almost ten times larger. But for this, you get far better performance in terms of course animations, higher resolution scenery and a digital music soundtrack."

Read on

A quote from (one of) the relevant threads on the N-Gage Arena rather sums general feeling up:

"Letting things break and then trying to keep customers in the dark for long periods of time may not be the best strategy for customer satisfaction."

Indeed. Come on, N-Gage team, please fix your client ASAP.

Bounce for the Nokia N900 - Possibly the first video clip of a new version of Bounce made for Nokia's upcoming Linux smartphone

Puzzle Quest Warlords for the N95 - A gameplay video, screenshots and brief review of THQ's bizarre but brilliant mixture of a role-playing game and Bejeweled-style puzzler

1942 Air Combat for the 5800 - Vid, screens and mini-review of a surprisingly fun 2D mission-based flying game. Nothing to do with the Capcom game 1942.

1942 for the 5800 - Vid, screens and mini-review of the Ovi Store conversion of the classic Capcom shoot-em-up.

Bobba for the N95 - News that the new virtual world community game/app from the makers of Habbo is now available in Ovi Store as a free download

The Nokia Beta Labs website talks a bit about how the feedback has been used, and asking people to check up on bugs they've spotted themselves and let them know.

Our team is following the Beta Labs discussion very closely, quality engineers analyzing error reports, trying to follow through error cases and asking more information about errors, if needed. Please update your error reports: if somebody asks for more information, try to give that. Now, try again with updated Nokia Ovi Suite 2.0 Beta and check if your error is fixed and report that back. Product managers follow feedback and suggestions and try to drive those to implementation or future releases of Nokia Ovi Suite.

Ovi Suite sits alongside the Nokia Nseries PC Suite (typically for NSeries devices) and the regular PC Suite (used by the ESeries and 'just a number' smartphones). having three separate suites for providing roughly the same connectivity and capability does seem a bit excessive - perhaps a modular approach of a base suite and then the phone specific items installed as optional components?

Anyway, that's for another time, for now, if you;re looking for the latest Ovi Suite, you can find it in the Nokia Beta Labs.