Which phone are you using to access N-Gage?

None at the moment. I don't really like any of the current compatible devices (bad looks, bad battery times or whatever), and seeing how there are no games out yet that catched my interest (although upcoming Dirk Dagger looks nice) I'm in no hurry buying one either.

So until there are more interesting games available, I'm somewhat content with my old phone, even if I've been looking to buy a new phone for some time. Unfortunately, what mostly catched my eyes when looking for a new phone was the upcoming 6220 Classic which isn't even compatible. Even if it's technically compatible.

If I had to choose one of the current devices, it would be the black N82. But I don't like the keypad of the N82, I think it's also slightly too large, and the battery times are relatively poor.

My dream phone would be something like 6220 Classic with 3.5mm jack and N-Gage compability. Or a smaller N82 without Wi-Fi (cause I have no use for it) and without 3D hardware graphic chipset (cause I value battery times more).

One thing I started to think when Nokia recently announced the 5320 was that it's pretty much a 3.5mm N-Gage version of the 6120 Classic. So maybe next year we will see a 3.5mm N-Gage version of the 6220 Classic? :tongue: Then again, I'm more fond of the neutal look of the 6xxx phones than the flashy stylish looks of the 5xxx and N-series. Talking about looks, I would prefered if the black 6220 Classic had white keys instead of blue keys.

So the dream phone may never be in my hand, argh.

Unfortunately, what mostly catched my eyes when looking for a new phone was the upcoming 6220 Classic which isn't even compatible.

We don't know whether it's officially compatible yet, it isn't released until the late summer. Nokia hasn't said anything about its N-Gage status.

Nokia haven't said anything about the N78 or N96 being compatible either, but they almost certainly are compatible as the N78 shown to the press had N-Gage installed and the N96 even has N81-style gaming keys.

I would bet money the 6220 will be officially compatible, but we'll have to wait and see.

It's interesting that just over 20% of respondents (at time of writing this) are still waiting for compatibility.

Perhaps this shows that Nokia are servicing 80% of people?
Personally I think not. I very nearly didn't bother to look at this survey as the title implies that it would only be of interest/relevance to people with N-Gage compatible phones.

As an E90 owner I am not in the N-Gage club - which I find very odd.

"Hi, meet me, because I can't believe I'm alone..."

I am most certainly a 'gamer'. I own a PSP, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii and an Xbox360. I'm also into technology - as with a lot of gamers, I guess that makes me a bit of a nerd - oh well.

I like the internet, I like QWERTY keyboards, I use chat software, email, facebook, electronic calendars - text input is important!

I own an iPod, because I like to carry my music with me, and my Nintendo DS or PSP covers the film media.

I USE APPLE MAC

I have a 4 month old daughter who I LOVE photo'ing and video'ing - she's sooooo cute! (BIG shame I can't edit my video on the phone)

I'm married, 35 years old and in a professional career. If I forget my phone and leave it at home, the biggest problem I'm going to have is not that I don't have access to business critical information/functionality - probably just be a bit peeved that I can't receive any pxt of my wee one for the day.

I owned a Nokia E61 prior to this, and a Nokia 6600 prior to that.

I would consider myself a power user of E Series phones. I push them to their limit, and I use everything they have to offer - Quick Office et al.

I'm very 'Multi-Media'. I am Mr N-Gage. I am Lord of... OK not Lord of anything.

It seems to me that Nokia have some deep-set, ill-conceived, misguided, ill-advised, misconceptions.

People are NOT business OR consumer.

True technophiles want the best technology - for mobile phones that means POWER, Screen size, QWERTY input, and SUPPORT!

"Nokia - You can tell me I'm a business user until you're blue in the face! All I know is that I like your E-Series phones, and I'm one big missed opportunity of a consumer that's going totally untapped by you"

Video editing, Gaming, TV out etc etc etc etc etc.... on the best screen with the best keyboard should be a 'no-brainer'

Sooo anyway, I'd really like to see a poll that showed just how many E-Series users truly are Hardcore Business men, and how many E-Series users own their phone simply for the QWERTY keyboard (mainly), screen size & power also (although these last two are catered for in N-series devices) - maybe call it 'Other reasons'

I am very 'Other'

"...that's me, am I really alone...?. . . "

Bobsymb wrote:It's interesting that just over 20% of respondents (at time of writing this) are still waiting for compatibility.

Perhaps this shows that Nokia are servicing 80% of people?

I don't think this site is very unrepresentative of the market as a whole. People who read AAS or AAN are probably much more aware of smartphones and available models than the average consumer. As such, all the surveys on AAS/AAN are just a bit of fun which should be taken with a considerable quantity of salt.

Personally I think the real N-Gage launch will happen when it starts being built into phones straight out of the box, which will hopefully happen this summer with the N78, N96 and 5320.

As an E90 owner I am not in the N-Gage club - which I find very odd.

I did a long editorial all about this topic last year, wondering why so few S60 phones were included in the compatibility list:

http://www.allaboutngage.com/features/item/Where_the_heck_are_all_the_phones.php

It does seem odd that Nokia aren't putting N-Gage on every possible phone they can, but on the other hand each new phone adds another layer of complexity to the testing process not just for the platform but the games too.

What it could well be is that trying to make N-Gage work on a phone designed before N-Gage is quite a tough job in terms of ironing out all the bugs on all the features. It might be that they've decided to just concentrate on getting the platform on future S60 devices from now on, which could be designed with N-Gage in mind as one of the standard features.

Krisse,

Clearly we agree on everything.
I didn't say that this SITE is unrepresentative, so we agree there.
I suggested the POLL may be unrepresentative, so we agree to take them with the proverbial.
I agree that readers of AAS/AAN are probably more smartphone aware than the average consumer.
We also agree that not putting N-Gage on to more phones is odd.

Nothing in my previous post was contrary to any of this.

Re your long editorial on this topic last year - I have read and enjoyed this and many, many other excellent editorials, podcasts, videocasts etc in the 3 years I have been regularly viewing this site (although this is my first every post).

That the true N-Gage launch will happen when it's built into phones is an opinion, from you, who is in a much better position to predict the future direction of Smartphones than I'm likely to ever be in, so I'll go with that.

Again you are more likely to know the the likely reasons for this:

You suggest there may be an increased level of complexity with achieving acceptable compatibility with current models.

Well that's fine, and this may be where we differ. So Nokia have all these expensive, hardware capable phones, but they've just decided to put the whole thing in the 'too hard basket' and move on. Surely you're not content with this, I'm not.

I've kept this predominantly N-Gage, such is the poll, although the real issue, of which this is just a part, is simply 'support'.

For Nokia to have high end, expensive devices which have a decreased functionality simply due to the purposeful with-holding of otherwise available software is nothing but a lack of support.

There is no excuse for a company to with-hold support.

My main point was that I believe Nokia have their black 'n' white profiling of N-Series / E-Series users wrong.

(Great site, great editorial... thanks for 3 years of consistently good content)

Bobsymb wrote:My main point was that I believe Nokia have their black 'n' white profiling of N-Series / E-Series users wrong.

Part of the reason for that has been the way Nokia was structured, with Mobile Phones doing the numbered phones, Multimedia doing the Nseries and Enterprise doing Eseries.

However, that has now changed. The manufacturing side has all been merged into one Devices division, so they will be much more free to aim devices at a whole range of people. Nseries and Eseries will just be brands rather than separate parts of the company.

For Nokia to have high end, expensive devices which have a decreased functionality simply due to the purposeful with-holding of otherwise available software is nothing but a lack of support.

Well, the problem is that expensive devices tend to have low sales, so it's actually relatively more expensive to support them with online services. In the case of the E90 it's also a device that is squarely aimed at businesses so they probably never even thought anyone would want N-Gage on it.

What I think will happen is that once N-Gage becomes a standard S60 feature along with Maps, Share and Music Store (also provided by Nokia), they will just bundle it with every S60 device without even thinking about it, especially when the bugs have been mostly ironed out (it's still got quite a few glitches even after beta testing).

Bobsymb wrote;
[INDENT]If I forget my phone and leave it at home, the biggest problem I'm going to have is not that I don't have access to business critical information/functionality - probably just be a bit peeved that I can't receive any pxt of my wee one for the day.[/INDENT]

If I forgot my phone I would realize the mistake about 200 yards from my house, as I use my Nokia N95 everyday to purchase a M-ticket for the bus that I catch to the station.

Going back to the article, it's interesting to see the poll saying that the majority of users who have used N-Gage are Nokia N95 users. For a phone that everyone comments about it is really good to see it way ahead.

Obviously the majority of people reading the best (AAS - Symbian Related Web Site) will have Symbian phones
.

Thanks Krisse, I didn't know about the historical internal divides from which Nokia is emerging. This actually explains a lot, and as you say, it does seem they didn't expect E-Series users to want functionality like gaming (hmm but that 3D graphics chip. . .?). I do think they have conveniently pigeon-holed their markets incorrectly.

With the N-Series and E-Series becoming 2 different brands rather than separate parts of the same company, I guess what it comes down to for me is how Nokia chooses to define those brands relative to each other:

Software -
Not having owned an N-Series device (but I've read a fair bit about them) it appears that there really is nothing Software related that can be done on an E-Series device that cannot be achieved on an N-Series device. This cannot be said to hold true in reverse however. N-Series have access to increased functionality through more regular Firmware updates, and software that is unique to N-Series although E-Series are more than capable of using the software.

Hardware-
Obvious hardware differences exist and, in my opinion, this should be the defining brand identifier - Qwerty / Screen size / Device size etc. These differences are choice enabling. These differences are between how users choose to interface with their devices, and they are not artificially upheld to manufacture distinct 'ghost markets'.

If the type of interface were to define the difference between the brands then functionality can be up to user preference. Making a smartphone 'your own' is, after all, what we all love about smart phones. Nokia are now touting their devices as being 'computers', so lets see them treat them as such. For example, how absurd would it be if Apple Mac were to not allow certain software (say iTunes) to run on their Power Book laptops and only let the software work on Desktops - even if the laptop is more powerful. Absolutely ludicrous - and this is how Nokia are behaving - Video editing software is an example of this.

I often read the line: ''we'll never get our perfect device''... Well, how hard can it be? (give or take a 'TV Out' here and an ill-conceived 'Thumb Pad' there). There are really only a handful of mainstream form-factors. There is only one OS (limiting ourselves to Nokia and S60)... and there is a lot of software. It should be a case of - pick your preferred form factor - and go wild! Oh, Just like a computer.

If there is software that cannot be used on a device, it should ONLY EVER be because the hardware cannot support it. It should NEVER be because the device manufacturer won't allow it.

Perhaps this is a transient period and Nokia will learn to treat their devices like the computers they fairly claim them to be. My correspondence with Nokia support would suggest otherwise unfortunately. My request for video editing on the E90 was met with short shrift and a 2 line reply saying it would never happen because the E-Series are for business use. I almost feel disingenuous owning an E90 - I should have admitted I had no business credentials to the sales person in the phone store and been denied access to the E-Series altogether. Am I a fraud?

The perfect device will be a lot longer coming if Nokia continue with the Business / Consumer separation, and fail to recognise that it's all just 'different folks, different strokes'. There are business men working with satisfaction on smaller N-Series devices who wouldn't go near a phone the size of the E90 with a barge pole - and here's me who tries (mostly successfully) not to get within a barge pole's length of an office who wouldn't use any other phone (certainly nothing without a qwerty keyboard).

I really believe it boils down to support. Ironic that a company at the bleeding edge of convergence can't seem to converge.

('Still Waiting' is now 22.5% - the 2nd most popular response in the poll 😊)

Bobsymb wrote:If the type of interface were to define the difference between the brands then functionality can be up to user preference. Making a smartphone 'your own' is, after all, what we all love about smart phones. Nokia are now touting their devices as being 'computers', so lets see them treat them as such.

They do eventually have the software on all their phones. The pattern tends to be that an S60 app appears on one or two devices, then a range of devices, then eventually it's available to them all. This is how Nokia Maps progressed, for example.

I think they do this as a form of "gamma testing", ie. they want to see what bugs appear even after the beta stage, and once they're confident about the product they release it to a wider audience. It also helps them to shift the more expensive models.

For example, how absurd would it be if Apple Mac were to not allow certain software (say iTunes) to run on their Power Book laptops and only let the software work on Desktops - even if the laptop is more powerful.

Well in a way Apple did do this when iTunes began, it was originally a Mac-only application and only later did it get released for Windows.

Absolutely ludicrous - and this is how Nokia are behaving - Video editing software is an example of this.

The Nseries video editing software is now available on the latest numbered S60 devices, for example the 6120 Classic has it. That's what I meant about the software starting on a range of devices and then spreading to them all, you just have to wait a while and it happens.

I often read the line: ''we'll never get our perfect device''... Well, how hard can it be?

Impossible, actually. 😉

People's tastes and priorities are utterly different, and as smartphones spread to an ever-wider audience the situation becomes even more irreconcilable.

Imagine trying to make perfect trousers, or the perfect car, or a perfect meal: it can't be done because one person's perfection is another's hell.

To give a specific example, when I got the E61 I generally loved it but loathed the mini-joystick. When I wrote about how bad it was on AAS, I immediately had other E61 users responding that the mini-joystick was exactly what they loved about the phone.

You simply can't please all the people all of the time! 😊

I do take your point about software, but as I said above the approach Nokia takes tends to be to release on limited numbers to start with and then spread it across the whole range.

But remember that S60 is an open platform: if you don't like the way Nokia's software division behaves, you can tell them to get stuffed. There's plenty of third party S60 software which can do pretty much everything that Nokia offers.

krisse wrote:We don't know whether it's officially compatible yet, it isn't released until the late summer. Nokia hasn't said anything about its N-Gage status.

Nokia haven't said anything about the N78 or N96 being compatible either, but they almost certainly are compatible as the N78 shown to the press had N-Gage installed and the N96 even has N81-style gaming keys.

I would bet money the 6220 will be officially compatible, but we'll have to wait and see.

In the pdf datasheets that were released back in february it mentions N-Gage for both N78 & N96. But in the datasheet for 6220 Classic there's nothing.

Kazutoyo wrote:In the pdf datasheets that were released back in february it mentions N-Gage for both N78 & N96. But in the datasheet for 6220 Classic there's nothing.

That may possibly have been because the datasheets were written when N-Gage was very much associated with Nseries, back when Nokia was still divided into three. Since then though we've seen the 5320 announced as N-Gage compatible, which is even cheaper than the 6220.

I'm not saying the 6220 definitely will have N-Gage, just that it's too early to tell whether it will or not. It's certainly capable of having it technically, and it would be very odd if it didn't. 😊

Thanks again Krisse, certainly it would appear that Nokia are very tentative about releasing software. As you say this has historically been the case.

I do believe that my Apple Mac / iTunes analogy still stands. Not releasing iTunes for Windows initially is irrelevant as Windows is an entirely different operating system. I'm not criticising Nokia for not releasing their software for other operating systems on other manufacturers phones. I'm criticising Nokia for not releasing software for just the operating system that runs on their phones - S60.

I believe Nokia needs a paradigm shift. Their phones are their hardware and their software should be compatible and available widely at once - just like with any other 'computer' hardware manufacturer using a single OS - just like Apple.

That video editing is becoming available on numbered phones is great but, well, thanks Nokia. It's still a tightly controlled, device-specific milking of a release. What about the E-SERIES - It's hard not to criticise Nokia when they fail to support.

This slowly, slowly approach to releases should not be necessary. To say they do this because they are worried about bugs is not really acceptable either. We are talking about a huge company making software for their OWN hardware on just ONE, well know quantity of an OS. I'm sure they are capable of doing this - for Nokia to say it is so they can iron out the bugs is really just an excuse for over controlling their releases because they are still operating from an out moded paradigm.

I read in one article where even Steve Litchfield commented that the E90's fall from grace for him was only down to Nokia's lack of support for the device.

As far as the perfect device goes, I did proviso this remark. Of course perfection is impossible, philosophically, and when human taste comes into it. This is why it's different folks, different strokes. With this in mind, Nokia could halve the problem. If all the software is available for all the smartphones that are capable of using the software then Nokia can concentrate on the hardware and leave the user to pack what they want onto their device. If they can change their paradigm and stop trying to manipulate the market divides through software and unequal firmware support, and instead define market differences through hardware - I Think, the user will benefit.

Until then I'll wait for N-Gage, Video Editing, Firmware etc... until they're such old news that they have no market leverage and Nokia doesn't mind making them available.

. . . . . . . . or I could buy a phone without a qwerty keyboard - yeah right!!🙄

Bobsymb wrote:I do believe that my Apple Mac / iTunes analogy still stands. Not releasing iTunes for Windows initially is irrelevant as Windows is an entirely different operating system.

Yes of course, but I think the reasons Apple had for putting it on the Mac first were very similar to those that Nokia have for holding back S60 bundled software: a mixture of wanting to promote their most profitable hardware by giving them first access to the software, and a desire to see the software working fully before introducing it to a wider audience (not just the OS bugs but also design considerations).

I'm not criticising Nokia for not releasing their software for other operating systems on other manufacturers phones. I'm criticising Nokia for not releasing software for just the operating system that runs on their phones - S60.

I do understand what you're saying, but I get the impression that S60 phones aren't quite as similar as they ought to be. It may not be possible to release one absolutely identical bit of software for all of them.

Just to give an example, I've been covering a lot of N-Gage stories lately and the N-Gage app is now available on the N81, N82 and N95, but the error messages people are getting seems to vary from model to model. There are certain errors that seem to crop up more on some models than others. That implies that each model has some quirks which affect the app in different ways.

In other words, even though S60 was meant to bring a unified platform, it's not 100% unified. S60 software may still require a few model-specific tweaks to squash bugs. Given that, it's probably better to get it nailed down on a few models first before opening it to a wider audience (and a wider range of model-specific bugs).

The situation was even worse back in the days of S60 1st and 2nd Edition, many software developers had to create three or four different versions for S60, even though in theory they should have only needed to create one.

To some extent no platform is 100% unified of course, and that's why PC tech support is such a nightmare because there are thousands of different PC models out there running various versions of Windows. What should work on all PCs often doesn't.

That video editing is becoming available on numbered phones is great but, well, thanks Nokia. It's still a tightly controlled, device-specific milking of a release. What about the E-SERIES - It's hard not to criticise Nokia when they fail to support.

Again, I suspect Eseries was never intended for anything but business, that's why many Eseries models have no camera, or come in a camera-free variant. I know lots of non-business people do buy them anyway, I bought an E61 for example, but they're not the target market.

The thing to do with mobile devices is look at whether their features out of the box suit you, and not to assume that more features will automatically be added, because they may not be. If you want more features than the product offers, vote with your wallet and buy something else. Voting with your wallet is by far the most effective way to send a message to any company, it's the thing they're most scared of. Nothing makes a business sit up and take notice more than a change in sales figures.

Mobile phones sell in such vast quantities (over 1000 million a year) that most phone companies seem to flit from one model to the next with little attention paid to predecessors. The situation isn't helped by phone networks letting people have regular free upgrades on subsidised phones, which means the userbase for older models is eroded more quickly than you might expect.

There's also the question of incentive: a hardware maker has to spend money on firmware updates but rarely receives any income for such an update, so older hardware which hasn't sold well is often left without any updates. Obviously updates are also important for ensuring customer loyalty, but low-selling models by definition are the ones which the least number of people wanted in the first place, so they're still the ones with the lowest incentive for an update.

I think what would help is if there was some clearer set of terms for updates, if phones and other devices had some kind of date on them up to which it's guaranteed that the manufacturer will release updates. Unfortunately I suspect most people don't even know about firmware updates, and such a scheme seems unlikely to happen until consumers are more aware of what firmware is and why updates are important.

Krisse,

Everything you say makes sense, and I think you sum it all up nicely when you comment that basically "S60 phones aren't quite as similar as they OUGHT to be" - Therein lies the rub, and Hopefully Nokia will remedy this. Comes back to their ironic lack of 'internal' convergence.

I'm also sure you're right that Nokia are going to give better support to their most profitable devices - but they don't mention that when they're selling you their Most Expensive phone. A guaranteed set of terms for updates, as you suggest, is an excellent idea, but one I certainly won't hold my breath for.

That a customer should look at a device's 'out of the box' features and make their decision based solely on those (as you suggest) is such a damning truth (certainly in the case of E-Series) that so flies in the face of what smart phones are all about.

Truth is though, that Nokia are ultimately going to disenfranchise some of their most loyal customers, if they fail to mete out more even-handed support, whilst another company/operating system steps up their game. What I'm thinking of is that right now, it's Nokia and S60 all the way for me, but I'm starting to see that this could very, very easily not be the case within 2-3 years time. If Nokia continue to give customers 'Either/Or' (business/consumer) choices when customers want both, it won't be long until another company fills that void.

With Nokia It is apparent that choosing a QWERTY interface means less and slower support, and an inaccurate automatic labeling of 'Business Oriented.

Currently I'm actually a very happy Nokia / S60 user. Being of a generation that is old enough to appreciate just how amazing this technology is - I still have a Sinclair ZX81 accompanied by a programming book 'What You Can Do With 1k'.😊

Bobsymb wrote:Krisse,

Everything you say makes sense, and I think you sum it all up nicely when you comment that basically "S60 phones aren't quite as similar as they OUGHT to be" - Therein lies the rub, and Hopefully Nokia will remedy this. Comes back to their ironic lack of 'internal' convergence.

Well... look at it from their point of view though: they're releasing a dozen new smartphone models a year, and the vast majority of smartphone owners don't seem to ever install any native software.

Given that situation, there's going to be a temptation to tweak the hardware to improve the built-in features even if it may interfere with compatibility, because it's the built-in features that ultimately get the phones flying off shop shelves.

However, the situation has greatly improved now, by and large S60 3rd Edition software does work on S60 3rd Edition devices. It's better than it was with S60 1st and 2nd Edition, and the emergence of QVGA as a standard resolution (even the E90 has it on the outside) has also helped improve compatibility over the past year or so.

That a customer should look at a device's 'out of the box' features and make their decision based solely on those (as you suggest) is such a damning truth (certainly in the case of E-Series) that so flies in the face of what smart phones are all about.

Smartphones aren't "about" anything for most people though, most people look at the features which come with it and buy entirely based on that, so phone manufacturers think along the same lines. Look at the iPhone: that had no ability to install native apps at all when it launched, which shows just how low a priority it is for phone manufacturers now, even at the highest end of the price range.

In fact most people who buy a smartphone are unaware that it is a smartphone. The typical S60 user will only use their phone's built-in features, never install third party software, and will probably never update the firmware either, so even if firmware updates appeared they will go to waste on most users.

Even with something as pricey as the E90, you wonder what proportion of its users are executives who do little beyond typing e-mail on it, with the device bought on expenses. They're not the kind of people who would ever blog about their experiences, so we never really hear about them in the smartphone community.

It's the same with N-Gage to some extent, even though N-Gage is now on the N95, N82 and N81, I suspect most owners of those phones don't know about it. That's why I think it'll only be when the N-Gage is a built-in feature, rather than a piece of add-on software, that it will enter the mainstream.

Truth is though, that Nokia are ultimately going to disenfranchise some of their most loyal customers, if they fail to mete out more even-handed support, whilst another company/operating system steps up their game.

If your priority with a device is regular firmware updates and wider compatibility with add-on software, then like I said above you should vote with your wallet and get whichever product best serves those needs. If enough people do that, manufacturers will get the message.

The problem is that the active smartphone user market is something of a niche compared to the vast number of people who buy a smartphone as a phone, and sales are where manufacturers get their priorities from.

Windows Mobile devices tend to be better for software support and tend to have more people buying their software, but they also tend to sell in much smaller quantities than Symbian devices, and you very rarely see anyone actually using a Windows Mobile device in public. They're serving a niche but to some extent that niche is holding them back, as most Windows Mobile devices seem designed to serve that niche without appealing beyond it.

Currently I'm actually a very happy Nokia / S60 user. Being of a generation that is old enough to appreciate just how amazing this technology is - I still have a Sinclair ZX81 accompanied by a programming book 'What You Can Do With 1k'.😊

I wasn't quite old enough to remember the ZX81 but I did have a ZX Spectrum as a child, and they were great days. 😊

That sort of illustrates my point in a way though. The Speccy started out as a general home computer (it didn't even have a joystick port!), but it became clear fairly soon that a lot of people were buying them as games machines and never bothering to use them for programming or serious apps. The amount of support for serious users fell as time went on despite overall sales rising, and by the end the Spectrum was sold entirely as a games system, complete with joystick and light gun.

Nokia's concentrating on phone features above all because that's where the smartphone sales come from now, which is why I keep emphasising that you should look at what the phone actually comes with rather than what you think it should come with. As things stand, features sell phones.

[SIZE="7"]BUT...[/SIZE]

...this situation is possibly about to change.

N-Gage is an example of a built-in feature and add-on software being the same thing: if a phone comes with N-Gage compatibility built-in, then Nokia will have to make sure the games work on all N-Gage phones in order to maintain the quality of the feature. This is also a feature where you cannot see everything in it straight out of the box, because most of the games are yet to be released, so Nokia has to commit itself to future software support of compatible phones.

What's more, Nokia gets money from every game sold, so there's a direct financial incentive for them to make sure that N-Gage spreads to as many phone models as possible. And the more phones it spreads to and the more games get sold, the more titles will be released on it, encouraging even more sales in a virtuous circle. That's why I think from 2008/2009 onwards we'll see N-Gage support built into every S60 device, because they'd be crackers not to do that.

I think a similar service ought to be extended to serious apps too, and as there's no technical difference between a game or serious app, the infrastructure is already in place to do this. If that happens, then it would greatly boost the amount of people buying apps which helps the S60 ecosystem, and it would also make the manufacturers of S60 devices more committed to compatibility and future software support.

Phones are gradually becoming means to buy online products and services, rather than just packages of features, and I suspect that should please people who've already been using them with add-on software for many years now.

Yep, indeed I have been looking from my own narrow perspective - I really didn't realise how narrow/niche it was though. I honestly thought that all people who bought smart phones knew what they were getting into, and used their devices accordingly.

(Gritting my teeth and repressing the urge to make a joke about big BUTts) - I like how you describe the future. Makes a lot of sense, and here's hoping Nokia aren't 'Crackers'. I have to say that's probably the most optimistic prediction I've heard/read and entirely plausible at that.

Thanks Krisse, for taking the time to go into such detail. If only Nokia's customer services were as responsive and AAS! :icon14:

Nokia can completely avoid this critical moaning about the E90 and make it compatible device and make it free to the developers if they like to make there games compatible with the internal screen or not..if not then the developer will lose the chance to buy there games to the E90 users..
what makes me comment only about the E90 is because the fact that will never find an Nseries with numeric keypad with 4' inch screen and 3d graphics accelarator and people buy this phone when they can buy 3 Nseries phones with the same price..now i wanna go for the E90 but am worry about the Nseries Ngage then i will buy N95 (thats on morning)...No i want the Full web experience since i have free data plan and i need the QWERTY (thats on evening)...my head is ache now and no solution beside paying 1300 to buy both E90 and N95 (am not Prime minister am Dentist just graduated before 1 year)..

I agree it would be nice to have N-Gage on the E90, I had one for a while and it was great fun playing games on it. Also, it should be technically possible as it's an S60 3rd Edition device.

But Nokia is probably giving it low priority because like you say the E90 is VERY expensive and the sales figures for expensive phones are usually very low.

I think what will happen in the future is that N-Gage will be on all S60 models as standard, which is what's starting to happen with Nokia Maps, Nokia Music Store and Share Online. It could take a year or more to reach that stage though.