I'll be to the point: the N-Gage ****ing sucks! So what exactly is the N-Gage? It's Nokia's new gameboy wannabe/cellphone/mp3 player/dish washer. Two reasons why it sucks:
1.) Poor Design
It makes me wonder what Nokia's hardware designers are smoking. Nokia has several other phones that look very similar to the N-Gage, which tells me that Nokia did not put a lot of effort in designing the N-Gage. If they had, it would look a lot more unique, and would not be so lame to use. For example, it is ridiculously stupid how you put the game cards into the machine. You take off the back cover, take out the batteries, and THEN put the game card in. It's easy as 1, 2, 3...4, 5, 6.
2.) Craptacular Games
You could forgive Nokia for all of the N-Gage's terrible design if it had any decent games. And it does not. All the launch titles comepletely suck. All of them are either have better versions on another system, or they are just pure crap. Granted, there are more games coming, but they are all likely to be ****ty ports, just like the launch games. There is really no exclusive that would make you want one...
Okay, so the N-Gage does not do well as a gaming machine, but what about its other features?
Cellphone: It's a tri-band cellphone(meaning you can use it pretty much anywhere in the world), but again, it suffers from design flaws. You have to hold it sideways against your ear to use it..Nokia calls it 'side talking'. I call it 'I look like a dumbass when using this phone'. You can use the included head phone to alleviate this problem, or you could even buy the $120 bluetooth earpiece. The keyboard layout is just plain weird and looks hard to use.
Mp3 Player: The N-Gage actually does decent in this department. It can play MP3 or AAC music files that you transfer over from your PC using the included usb cable and software. You can even record music using the built in radio, BUT you have to buy a memory card to store your music. A 64 MB card that can hold about an hours worth of music costs $70 :S
It is going to cost $299, but I think like most cellphones, you should be able to sign up for some sort of plan and the price will probably come down to like $150, but its still not worth it. There is only one positive thing about the N-Gage; Nokia seems to be really focusing on networking, and building an online community.
So what the moral of this story here? If Nokia had a infomercial for the N-Gage, it would sound like this: "Throw out all those cluttering devices you have, your gameboy, your cellphone, your mp3 player, N-Gage has it all!"
Like seriously, Nokia's tried to throw all those devices together to try to make some sort of super gizmo, and thought that it would be perfect. The N-Gage has a little of everything, but does not excel in any single area.
Source: http://ofg.ganai.com/oct2003.html