The exhibition celebrates the 20th anniversary of the first mass market GSM phone (the Nokia 1011) and uses phones from throughout Nokia's history to illustrate and explain changes in both mobile and design. 

Many of Nokia's most iconic phones are on display, serving as a reminder of the impact Nokia and its products have had in the last two decades. As you might expect the Nokia Communicators (Series 80) make an appearance, as does the Nokia 7650 (First Series 60 product), the Nokia N95 and many more.

Here's Nokia's description of the exhibition:

Spanning the first floor of the Design Museum in London, three discrete sections offer different perspectives and experiences. 

An immersive statistics room, featuring mesmeric imagery shows the enormous scale and reach of the brand, vividly demonstrating how Nokia positively affects millions of peoples’ lives. Another powerful audio-visual space sees designers taking a speculative look at Nokia’s role in shaping peoples’ lives and advancing design.

And finally, the flowing main space celebrates the products themselves, vividly telling the stories of the most iconic and influential Nokia phones. An intriguing mix of exhibits and information reveal how Nokia has continually redefined the possible and captured the zeitgeist.

Using key products to mark moments in time, the visual narrative tells how Nokia has steadily influenced the way people interact and connect, and how Nokia’s design studio has grappled with the limits of materials, forms and interaction to create small objects of immense practicality and understated beauty.

Video trailer

In the clip, 49 of the 56 possible N-Gage 'hardware' launches are shown (Martin appeals for anyone who can help complete the set.... Ewan?), plus you get a peek at one of the original N-Gage titles being played on the N-Gage 'classic' - a terrific little phone that I used and loved for a while (it had everything - for its time, including radio and line-in audio recording!).

Here's the video, you've got to admire a collector this dedicated(!):

If you can help Martin, drop him a line here.

^{(image credit)}

1. Nokia N95 8GB

It all started when I caught several non-techy tradesmen using the black monster, the Nokia N95 8GB, as their main phone. In each case, they'd tried a touchscreen phone (respectively a LG Cookie and an iPhone) and in each case had returned to 'their old Nokia' because it was foolproof and wasn't fiddly to use while working.

But this isn't a touchscreen rant - what caught my eye for the umpteenth time was the huge 2.8" display, to this day unusual for a non-touch device. Appearing on the N95 8GB and N96, this large, clear, transflective display was stunning for its time and, for information display, still streets ahead of most of the pack. What's happened to this form factor? The newer N86 has only a 2.6" screen, noticeably smaller, and there are a plethora of 2.4" and 2.2" screened sliders also available. 

Comparison, 2.8" display (N95 8GB), 2.6" (N95), 2.4" (N82)

It's been tempting to go back to the form factor myself - the N96 is the most up to date, but it's so plasticky and slow, with no graphics acceleration. So I find myself about to bid on N95 8GB units on eBay and then have to stop myself, remembering that quite a lot of the software we take for granted these days, including up to date Ovi Maps with free navigation, is either not available or requires extra downloads or payment or hassle. Plus there was the non-expandable 8GB of flash memory. Gah.

What's needed, Nokia, is an update of the N95 form factor. Use the N96's 2.8" transflective screen, use the N86's keypad (or perhaps a slide down E71-style minature qwerty?), put in the very latest builds of Ovi Maps, and Ovi Store, on the latest version of S60 3rd Edition FP2, as used in the likes of the N86 or E72, put in the N86's camera (there's plenty of room) and - hey, let's shoot for the moon - a Xenon flash. Call it the N87, perhaps? I would buy the result in an instant.

2. Nokia E61i

Now - the 2.8" transflective display wasn't only used in the two Nseries smartphones. Oh no. It was also the highlight of the qwerty-based Nokia E61 and E61i - we'll skip over the former as it was very much a first-gen attempt at the form factor - and had, among other big downsides, no camera.

The E61i was almost decent though, with microSD expansion, the huge BP-4L battery and a 2 megapixel camera, just held back by being the last Nokia to use the dreaded Pop-port rather than a form of USB, and by a rather weedy processor and RAM quotient, which meant that using the E61i required a healthy degree of patience. Most importantly of all, there was the 2.8" display and, mounted in landscape mode, this enforced a certain width to the device - which meant that bigger keys could be fitted. Where the modern E71, E72 and E5 all require pretty small and nimble thumbs, the E61i could be used with comparative ease, however much text you needed to bash out in an email or text.

So what happened? I guess someone at Nokia's design bureau made a strategic decision that the E61i form factor was too big - which is strange since some of the RIM Blackberrys of the time had similar width, screens and keyboards. So the E71 was borne - with a 2.4" display and a shrunk-down keyboard. And, even curiouser, RIM then followed suit with a downscaling of their flagship Bold series to use smaller screens and smaller keyboards. Did the human race suddenly just evolve smaller thumbs?

So here's to the Nokia E67, with the E61i form factor (screen/keyboard), but with the latest S60 3rd Edition FP2 (as above), a 5 megapixel autofocus camera, dual LED flash, microUSB data and charging, full 32GB card support (the E61i was limited to 2GB, sadly) and a processor bump.

Definitely a form factor which deserves another airing. Nokia could even use the same case!

3. Sony Ericsson P800

Yep, that's right, I said P800, not P900. The latter is the one everyone remembers as the classic UIQ device, the original touchscreen interface on top of Symbian OS, but that's because it looked more modern, had slightly better performance and the advantage of another year of software development. The P800 was the really innovative one, a pure touchscreen device, a la 2010, with a really clever passive flip keypad in which the keys 'prodded' through to press the appropriate points on the touchscreen beneath.

By using this passive system, no fragile wiring was needed through to the keypad and the mechanism to attach it could be kept simple. In practice it was the work of only a minute to detach (or attach) the keypad and transform the phone from standard form to touchscreen slate. Terrific stuff, and there was the added benefit of a transflective screen, so it worked in the sun, unlike the P900, for which Sony Ericsson had decided, in their infinite wisdom, to equip it with a 'modern' TFT that looked a bit better indoors but was invisible outdoors. Sigh.

(Real Symbian 'nuts' may, at this point, also bring up the Ericsson R380i, using a similar passive flip to the P800 and its direct ancestor - but which had a non-extensible very early version of Symbian, making it not - technically - a smartphone)

I would say that, with so many people getting a little bored of vanilla touchscreen tablets, what better time to bring back the P800 transformer form factor? Clip on a hinged keypad and get the best of both worlds. But there's a slight problem, in that the 'prod through' system for the keys relied on a traditional resistive touchscreen beneath. Maybe a modern version would have conductive keys and protrusions so that keypresses would still 'work' on a modern glass capacitive touchscreen? A challenge for a manufacturer!

4. Nokia N93

Who can forget the N93, the original transformer phone and one which could be clamshell, laptop or camcorder, depending on how you twisted its screen and double-hinge? Owing a debt to the N90, which very much paved the way, the real kicker for me was the way the camera features/application started automatically when you opened and twisted the N93, in order to start taking photos or videos. In other words, an intuitive physical motion got you to right place in the software and left you with a very obvious camera/camcorder configuration.

When someone points an opened N93 at you, it's immediately obvious what they're doing, it even looks like a 'real' camcorder, and there's a resulting unspoken communication about you knowing what you're doing and taking quality footage. Whereas with a modern phone - even the N8 - it's accepted that you're trying to take photos or video, but the subject's expectations aren't that high (they've seen what the average phone produces for photos or video).

So... what about the N93's form factor revived, but with that huge camera barrel containing the N8's large 12mp sensor and with 720p? Or even Nokia's first device with 'real' 1080p HD video capture? Wouldn't that be a great reason to bring back the transformer? Inside, as with several of the devices above, it would probably run a variant on the N86's current firmware, but with all the modern gadgets that 2010 brings (the camera specs above, plus GPS/navigation/FM transmitter/HDMI out and so on, a future N99 would certainly get a lot of camera phone fans very excited.

PS. Nokia did do an N93i, with sleeker looks and with planned enhancements like continuous auto-focus, something which we're still struggling to get right in 2010, but the N93i flopped because of a poor choice of screen tech (TFT, which you couldn't read outdoors), poor microphone placement (facing upwards!) and the decision to nobble the auto-focus system for production firmware because of worries over motor noise and wear and tear on the components. What might have been....

5. Nokia 9300

Ah yes, possibly my most controversial form factor choice here. The famous 'Communicator', identified very strongly with Nokia's iconic clamshell devices from 2000 to 2008. I've picked the 9300 here, but I could almost as well have picked the 9210 or 9500 or even the E90 - the idea's the same. Have a super-robust traditional 'phone' with conventional keys and operation, but then split the device down its thinnest side and open it like a clam - hence the term 'clamshell', to reveal a large landscape display on one half and a large qwerty keyboard on the other. Genius.

Nokia's product teams would point to the N97/N97 mini and the upcoming E7 as proof that similar large screen/qwerty hybrids are still very much in their thoughts, but it's not quite the same. When these later hybrids are closed, you've effectively got a touchscreen tablet, with all the usual disadvantages for real world use, i.e. needing delicate handling, needing two hands for many operations. With the classic Communicator form factor, you've got buttons and a one-handed interface, perfect for busy, active people, but with the full laptop-like qwerty form available when there's time to sit down and open up.

Even the E90 is now quite out of date in terms of its software, the 9300 and 9500 are positively archaic, using the older (very Psion-like) Series 80 menu-driven interface, but there's no reason why the E7's software couldn't be implemented for the 'inside' of a new Comminicator, at nHD resolution, with a cut down version for the external screen (suggest running at 320 by 360 showing just the top half of each homescreen, with actual apps using this reduced resolution and doing their usual good job of scaling the interface). 

Nomenclature? It would be a Communicator, of course. Possibly the E95, indicating its heritage?

____________

Are there any other form factors from the Symbian world that you'd like to see revived? Nokia (or others), if you're reading this, please take heart that you were on the right track with these ideas and (in my opinion, at least) they're well worth re-exploring.

Steve Litchfield, AAS, 11 Dec 2010

There’s no doubt that the inclusion of the first Snake game was a revolution. It clearly showed that applications and games could not only run on a smartphone, but that the users would happily accept them. When you look back, this was one of those moments where you could see an industry ready to change.

Nokia continued to push Snake with their handsets. As their Symbian powered handsets started to appear (in the 9210 and 7650), a quick check on the bundled CD showed an installable Snake game. Initially it was Snake 2, which lost the classic blocky look, to be followed in later devices with Snake 2 EX that polished the ideas of terrains and maps in the game.

Snakes reaches the N-Gage.

The high water mark of Nokia’s reptilian adventures has to be the two variants of Snakes. The first was available on the original N-Gage platform, this game (along with a one level demo of their strategy game Pathway to Glory) was given away as a free download through their website. Many variants of the Snake game add a twist with their own rules, and just doing things differently, but Nokia managed something special. They managed to bring a 3D psychedelic experience to the snake game, and it all worked. Not only did they have a good game, but again they showed what was capable on the mobile phone as a gaming platform.

The second variant appeared on the N95, which was essentially the same game. However, the larger screen, faster graphics, and TV-Out cable (!), were just more impressive parts of the package that marked the N95 as a landmark phone.

Your portable console, the N95 - TV-Out and Snakes.

Since then, many perceptions of Nokia have been damaged. Not least of their skill in promoting the Snake game. Their next effort was Snakes Subsonic, for the "Next generation gaming platform that was N-Gage." It would be polite to say that they dropped the ball. A clunky, unresponsive game, low frame rate, and slow game play. Basically Nokia got it wrong.

Rather than fixing it, we’ve not seen any more official Snake action. There have been various third party developers taking a swing at it (such as Snake Revolution from Digital Chocolate), but nothing from Nokia themselves. Instead, they're pointing towards one of many alternatives, while not providing their own.

Now here’s the spooky thing. If you were to look at the perception of Nokia as a leader in the smartphone market over time - the curve of "just how good people think they are", you’d have a curve that fits in with the quality and impact of their snake games.

So on that basis, I don’t want to see Nokia telling me to go buy someone else’s effort at a Snake game. I want them to come out with an updated version, that has the same zip and addictiveness as the old version. A game that makes you want to play it, and that I can be proud to show off around the pub. Rather like I’m hoping the new Symbian powered phones will be accepted.

-- Ewan Spence, Nov 2010.

And yes, I mean Nokia here. Though the strange symbiotic relationship means that Symbian is separate from Nokia, they are tied closely together. The fortunes of Symbian in the near future rely heavily on how Nokia handles the next six months, so it’s important for the Finnish company to play the N8 correctly in the marketplace.

How can the Finns be cool again? They have had 'it' before (remember all the fuss about the Matrix 8110 phone?), could they get 'it' back again? This is of course assuming that they have lost 'it' – their image in the Far East is different to that in the US or Europe.

So let’s go from a starting point that Nokia need to be globally cool and get their mojo back. Let’s also assume the software and UI is tweaked and everyone is happy with that. What could we suggest?

Get the influential voices talking about you

A smart online campaign can get a lot of perceived buzz which can easily be noticed by the more mainstream media channels. Witness the work of Old Spice over the last week who have supplemented their “Old Spice Man” by having the actor appear in personalised videos to online ‘celebrities’ who naturally tell all their friends. An old brand becoming cool again? See it can be done! 

Reach as many people as possible

And that means TV advertising. It’s interesting to note here in the UK that Nokia has sponsored the fantasy show Misfits on Channel 4 during the initial run on E4 in November and now for the repeat showings on Channel 4. The Ovi branding is present on the adverts for the show, and during the episode, while the initial run had the characters tweet and appear on social networks in real time between episodes.

More of this, with lots more visibility would be smart. And maybe next time choose a show that can reach a significant number of viewers? Choosing a cult hit they can ride along with isn’t going to be easy, but if they want my suggestion, go speak to the team behind Slingers and sort something out.

Try to connect emotionally, not through a spec sheet

People don’t watch Columbo to try and solve the murder, they watch it to see how Columbo solves it, what he does, how he connects with the special guest star of the week, how he niggles their emotions and learns everything. If Columbo was a detective going through the motions he’d be boring. It’s the emotional connection the audience make with him that makes it a success.

The N8 has a great camera, amazing sound reproduction, HDMI output, but while these are important I don’t think they can be the core of any advertising of the handset. There is no emotion in saying it is “the best” and “better than ever.”

Glance at Apple’s adverts for the iPhone 4 – all pretty much focussing on people using Facetime to connect to family and friends (and directed by the Oscar winning Sam Mendes). MG Siegler at Techcrunch has done a comprehensive piece on these adverts, and it’s worthwhile reading for everyone in the mobile industry.

Get the handsets out to people

Give people the opportunity to try the N8, or your latest hardware. I know this might seem a little bit self serving, but if you want people to talk about the company, the phone and the service, then you need to make sure they have said phone and access to the service.

One of the few times that gaming blog Penny Arcade mentioned the N-Gage was when Nokia proactively sent out some handsets to them, along with Pocket Kingdom,  to review. They gave it a fair hearing after actually trying it out. With so many people burned by the N97’s early problems, are they going to take a chance on the N8? The C6? Or any other device?

Nope, you’ll need to be a pro-active catalyst here.

Don’t try to be cool at all

“Nothing can be more dreary than “coolness” …postured, actually secretly rigid coolness that covers up the fact that the character is unable to convey anything of force or interest, a kind of sociological coolness soon to become a fad up into the mass of middleclass youth for awhile.”

-- Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels.

If you push too hard in the promotion states, then you’ll overdo it. Do the advertising, get the message out, and let friends, peer groups and your users do the work. People will decide, not Nokia. The Finns simply have to make sure everyone is aware of the choices, deliver on what they promise, and not become a company that reminds people of that annoying person who's looking for acceptance at a party. It's a fine line to balance.

The question is whether to do only a little bit of marketing, or risk getting closer to the edge. I’d say that the former is not working at the moment, so a bit of risk would be a worthwhile bet. Get the name out there, get a solid, emotional message, and back up words with hardware and user support.

-- Ewan Spence, July 2010.

The video was filmed in co-operation with Ben Smith from The Really Mobile Project. A big thank you to him for his excellent camera and editing work. Ben has published a post describing the video here.
   

The Nokia Experience Walkabout with Rafe Blandford

Ben Smith: "Welcome to Finland, we're here attending Nokia's 'Open for Ideas' event - it is all about innovation. However earlier in the day we got to attend their experience lounge at their Espoo headquarters and like a mobile sniffing bloodhound we sent Rafe Blandford to pick out the best and the classics that they have on display".

This video is also available in HD on YouTube.

Here's our earlier still image gallery of the Nokia Experience Lounge.

Ben and I also teamed up to shoot some other videos, including a closer look at the X3 and C6 handsets and video demos of Nokia Research Centre prototypes. We aim to publish these over the next few week or so.

"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.

Okay, we made the same digs as well, but then carried on. Most tech sites left it at a joke and moved on. And while the Nokia fanboys reared up their heads and complained in the comments, it illustrates one of the reasons why Next Gen N-Gage has failed. And the blame is, squarely, at the door of Nokia.

The annoying thing is that, as the Next-Gen Platform launched, the technology was pretty much in place. It had an on-device client that was targeting the majority of handsets in the S60 portfolio; a built in application store before they became fashionable; not only their own development studios but third party support from THQ, EA and Gameloft; they had an addressable base that rivals any gaming platform... yet it slipped through their fingers.

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.

The Legacy of the N-Gage and the N-Gage QD

I'll touch on this briefly, but Nokia were not starting from scratch. Thanks to the N-Gage handsets and games developed, they should have had an understanding of the market they were already in. I suspect the inability to get MMC cards in retail stores drove them to creating the online concept of sales and distribution; but what lessons had they really learned?

Two things that never changed were vital. The first was that there was no change in the appreciation that the games market was wildly different to the handset manufacturing department, this never seemed to change the basic modus operandi of Nokia. Perhaps this was arrogance, but if they'd acted more like a Sony or Nintendo department rather than a Finnish handset manufacturer that would have made a difference. They were new to the table, and new companies need to play the game and follow the unspoken rules that already existed in the 'family' of gaming. Nokia didn't, and were shunned.

And they kept the name N-Gage. Why? It already had a huge negative connotation, you'd never escape people going “is that the taco phone from three years ago?”, yet they carried on. A serious look at what people perceived of their games effort should have started with step one: rebrand the gaming service.

The First True Device App Store?

So lets look at what should have been the Cullinan Diamond in the Next-Gen Platform's crown jewels – the on-device Client. This is the portal into the world of N-Gage, where people would download the games, pay for them, chat to their friends, discover new products and keep everything up to date. It's a mix of IM client and app store, software updater and personal achievement record. And I'll give the designers credit here, when it launched, this was state of the art.

Yes, it had problems that we all spotted straight away. What happens to your games when you need to switch phones, for example. Well, you license the game per handset, was the Finnish answer. Err... Again Nokia were thinking like a hardware manufacturer and not a publisher. Even after pressure (especially from us) this issue was never solved beyond negotiating on a per-case basis with the support lines. A solution that could never scale.

And the client, while receiving bug fixes, never received any new features. A simple “suggest people you should befriend”, given the same games purchased and played, would have helped new users to the system find their way around to make the most of the multiplayer games and challenges that were out there.

Nope, the first iteration was obviously enough for Nokia, and they moved on. Much as they do with handsets after one or two firmware updates.

Community, Social Networks and Fan Support

One of the goals of N-Gage was to create a community, and the two primary tools Nokia used for that were their N-Gage blog and the N-Gage Arena. Both of these were great starting points and if this start had been built on and outreach improved to other areas then there could have been a growing community around the platform. Much like the client, it seemed that blog plus forum was enough for Nokia.

For example, when Twitter started to gain ground, did Nokia jump on this as a new tool for promotion and discussion? Or did they start an account, follow seven people, and post a massive three messages? I'll give you a clue, it's not the former. And if this isn't their official Twitter account, then why not?

Nokia needed to get out and interact where the gamers were online. They needed to be doing everything better, faster and more prominently than the other companies because they were the young upstart left out in the cold to see if they would thrive or freeze to death.

The fans running the N-Gage sites should have had a named contact, been pro-actively given registration codes for review purposes, early access to promotional materials and been courted to keep the community happy even if they didn't come to Nokia's N-Gage site.

You may well be noticing a trend here.

Good Games

Okay, now this might be controversial, but the initial games for the Next-Gen Platform were pretty darn strong. Creatures of the Deep is still one of the best casual games out there, even though it's based on Fishing. But that's the point of a good game; no matter the topic, the development team should be able to make something that is entertaining.

When Nokia had a strong hand on the developers, they managed this. Titles such as Creatures of the Deep, System Rush and One had a polished look and were suited for gaming on a mobile device. They even had their platform 'killer game' in the form of Reset Generation. Unfortunately, that was about it. You can't build an entire gaming ecosystem on your own titles in the modern market. You need the help of third party developers, and this is where the N-Gage catalogue was let down.

The perception was that N-Gage games were nothing more than ports of the generic java games that these companies churn out for operator portals and dumb handsets. Sure they had a “do this and get N-Gage Points on the Arena” function, but that was it. There was no taking advantage of the extra power in the smartphones, or the opportunities for connected gaming. Countless game reviews could be boiled down to “it's the java version, look here.” And with every release, the view of the ecosystem in the eyes of the top tier developers slipped a little bit more, and they put less effort into the next title.

Why? Well at a rather businesslike viewpoint, the games were not selling enough copies. When you can directly compare the sales of an N-Gage title to the java version on the same platform, when you can compare it to the whole marketplace, N-Gage just didn't match up when balancing the books.

Nokia did not create a virtuous cycle for developers that would let them invest in game one, make money to live on and invest in game two, and repeat the process for subsequent games. It never happened. Partly that was down to simple sales, but also because the feeling was that the certification and approval process from Nokia was cumbersome and placed too much of a burden on developers.

There were a handful of solid game developers on the Symbian platform, and a large number of Java studios that were well placed to take advantage of the end-to-end solution that Nokia apparently had. Where were they and why were they not involved? Either they were never approached by Nokia, or after making their own approaches, they looked at it and went... nope, not for us.

Somewhere in the last two paragraphs is the reason that N-Gage mustered under 50 games while the iPhone App Store gathered thousands.

Oh, and Reset Generation? In my review I closed with “Nokia, prove you can do this every time. Reset Generation is a superb hit single and we'll give you the Grammy for it. But let's have the album.” Well not only did we not get the album, but the one Rockstar programmer that Nokia had managed to capture, Scott Foe, walked away early this year.

If you listened to my rant in this week's Insight Podcast, while I admittedly focussed on the initial hardware version of the N-Gage and how Nokia have handled the shutdown process, there is a common thread running through everything in the N-Gage project. It started off with something that was revolutionary or certainly ahead of the game. But the implementation was poor, there was a lack of continuing support and new ideas were rarely added into the mix. It's almost as if people were scared to innovate after the original Eureka moment.

Here's the worrying question for Nokia. Is it just N-Gage that was plagued by this strategy? If we looked at the Ovi Store, would we find the same initial wonderful idea, an average first pass at implementation, and then see it simply pushed aside because it just about works, while the marketing department focusses on the next big project? Hasn't that already happened to Ovi Share (and Ovi Files - Ed) (and Ovi Sync - Rafe)? And what about the haphazard way that the one year anniversary and lapsing subscriptions to Comes With Music was handled?

What indeed.

The N-Gage was a brave new world when announced in 2003. The revamp showed that, despite the poor implementation of the hardware solution, lessons had been learned. The question now is if any more lessons have been learned and if the Finnish company can apply those lessons to the rest of their Software and Services – the same services that they are proclaiming to be the future of Nokia.

-- Ewan Spence, Nov 2009.

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.

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. Setting high expectations and a high price, the initial N-Gage service was built around a phone, also called N-Gage, that was briefly the highest specification consumer smartphone on the planet.

Unfortunately, very few people could look beyond the speaker and microphone on the edge of the machine, leading to the N-Gage being called Taco for most of its life as people discovered “Side Talking”. The initial impression and the subsequent release of almost no games left its parents no choice but to opt for reconstructive surgery.

Given a new name for a hopefully new life, the N-Gage QD brought respectability to the name, but not the mass market success of six million devices that was hoped for. Nokia stood behind their plucky youngster and continued to pour funds both at the device but also at developers to create new games for the portable gaming smartphone.

A prized franchise, Snakes, was brought over from the regular phone line-up to bolster N-Gage in the winter season of 2004. In a bid to show what the platform was capable of, the game was released for free and in the process showed that N-Gage could deliver. But it also showed flaws in Nokia that are still there. What should have been a launch title was delivered to a platform where the public had already given up, and the press had made up their mind.

Why, they asked, was a phone company dabbling in software? No game developer would work on a platform where piracy was rife and every game was available online for free. Which is exactly what Sony and Nintendo have to do now. Nokia, yet again, were blazing a trail and showing us the future.

And after a ropey start, the games were arriving with style. The classic turn based war game Pathway to Glory handed gamers something genuinely new and exciting; while Pocket Kingdom built up a huge following of RPG fans as they played in a game that connected every single one of them to a single world – in the same month as the first version of World of Warcraft was released.

Unfortunately, this triumvirate of titles was the peak of the original N-Gage software catalogue. A decision to focus on gaming on all smartphones, as opposed to dedicated hardware, accompanied the appointment of Gerard Wiener as the Director and General Manager for Games at Nokia.

The fans were kept engaged with titles such as One, Rifts and Settlers of Catan, but the N-Gage hardware and its portfolio of 58 games was stood down and placed into hibernation in November 2005.

In public, little was said about the N-Gage, which stumbled to sales of around two million handsets. But in private N-Gage was looking to mature and make itself available to the huge number of handsets that ran the Symbian OS-powered S60 interface. Announced during the E3 gaming conference that year (and then again in 2006), it would take 18 months for the public to see the N-Gage service.

Named “The Next Generation Gaming Platform”, it reached public beta in February 2008 on Nokia's N81 device, to be followed by the N82 and N95 variants.

Unfortunately, similar flaws in execution from the Finnish parents were evident. The number of handsets that had the client was far lower than the devices which had the same specifications to run the client and software, and promises that a number of devices would run the client were broken after months of silence on the issue.

And both the public and the press could not forget what the original generations of the N-Gage had been like.

Other issues, such as the inability to re-download the games purchased when you changed handset were never addressed, even after 18 months of questions and an investigation from All About N-Gage and BBC News.

Again a number of strong games were available, although the majority of the critically acclaimed games were those commissioned as first party titles by Nokia.

These Nokia games showed what the platform could do, as fighting game One resurfaced and won the best 3D Mobile game from the International Mobile Gaming Awards; Dirk Dagger won best gameplay; and Hooked on: Creatures of the Deep was nominated for best gameplay. Reset Generation redefined what a mobile connected multi-player game could do and gathered Nokia (and designer Scott Foe, who was also behind Pocket Kingdom) a huge amount of critical acclaim.

Yet the majority of games were perceived to be little more than ports of java titles with community scoring features grafted on top of the game mechanics. Look behind the money Nokia invested to those developers who wanted to make a living from the platform and it was hard to see where success would come from.

On the community side, Nokia struggled to communicate with users, and while a forum and blog were set up, there was little interaction beyond one or two staff members tasked with caring for the community. As long periods went by where no games were released and no information was offered by Nokia, the community and those looking on could see a gaming system that was slowly, painfully, willing itself not to die.

It was ultimately unsuccessful. Developers drifted away, new S60 handsets had problems running the client software and N-Gage's parents moved on to another digital download store and other online services where it hopes it can service a community better than the gamers that stood by it since 2003.

With a short announcement today, the first combined software and service from Nokia in Finland has now run its course. It is hoped that the George Mallory-esque trail blazed out by this early pioneer will be succeed by an Edmund Hilary in the near future,

N-Gage died with no direct relatives, but is survived by one cousin (http://store.ovi.com/) and has left its influence in friends such as the Apple iPhone Store, the Sony Playstation Network and others.

Thoughts and well wishes can be left on the community site until a final service on September 2010. No flowers, please send donations to the UI designers of the Ovi Store.

-- Ewan Spence, Oct 2009.

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

"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.