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Worth mentioning the N-Gage, which got a Wordle port recently, powered by SDL2: https://hackaday.com/2022/04/08/wordle-comes-to-the-nokia-n-gage-thanks-to-new-

Worth mentioning the N-Gage, which got a Wordle port recently, powered by SDL2: https://hackaday.com/2022/04/08/wordle-comes-to-the-nokia-n-gage-thanks-to-new-sdk/ https://hackaday.com/2022/04/08/wordle-comes-to-the-nokia-n-... I remember the N-Gage being lambasted when it came out, but recently I realized that those same people also lambasted the iPod, and maybe I can't trust those people's judgment about tech. You know, the Slashdot crowd. Maybe it was a good system that was just poorly positioned in the market against the Game Boy Advance. $200 for a phone + gaming system doesn't sound so bad, and the more recent comments I've heard about it are along the lines of "underrated system that was ahead of its time". It was competing against a $100 Game Boy Advance, though.

chipotle_coyote 4y ago
The original N-Gage made a few astoundingly bad industrial design decisions that came up in literally every review. * They put the phone microphone and speaker on the side of the device, which meant holding the top of the gadget to your head if you wanted to use it as a phone without a headset -- this was both awkward physically and looked phenomenally stupid. * You had to remove the battery to get to the game cartridge slot! Again, really awkward. Really, the ergonomics overall were kind of baffling. * It had a portrait orientation screen that was slightly lower resolution than the Game Boy's, which made doing ports of games designed for the landscape orientation more common everywhere else more difficult. The updated "QD" version fixed a lot of the weirdness, and it's possible that if it had been the original N-Gage, things might have gone a lot differently. Of course, that's kind of a theme in the Nokia story in the mid-to-late 2000s, I think -- they got really good at shipping terrific products just a couple years later than they should have. If Symbian^3 and the N8 had come out in 2008 instead of 2010, Nokia's fate might have been pretty different. (Emphasis on "might," to be sure.)
- LightG 4y ago
  Obligatory: https://sidetalking.com/page-1.html https://sidetalking.com/page-1.html
- dotancohen 4y ago
  > They put the phone microphone and speaker on the side of the device. I actually drilled a few tiny holes in the side of my N-Gage so that I could hold it like a normal phone. The actual speaker was not near the edge, and was mounted such that its natural direction was towards the rear of the device. The N-Gage had a channel moving sound from the speaker out towards the side. I have no idea why they engineered the device like that. It would have been easier to just put a grill right where I drilled my holes.
commandar 4y ago
>and the more recent comments I've heard about it are along the lines of "underrated system that was ahead of its time". It always had a following, but the thing flopping wasn't because of the Slashdot crowd, it's because it just wasn't very good out of the gate. The N-Gage has an awful form factor that made it suck both as a gaming device and as a phone. Game cartridges were hidden behind the battery, button placement was awkward, and sidetalking became an early internet meme for very good reason. Nokia fixed a lot of the problems with a second generation release, but at that point the brand was largely poisoned.
- eddywebs 4y ago
  I think they changed that with Ngage QD next gen ngage loved that phone. Quite stable and powerful for an symbian os.

chipotle_coyote 4y ago

The original N-Gage made a few astoundingly bad industrial design decisions that came up in literally every review. * They put the phone microphone and speaker on the side of the device, which meant holding the top of the gadget to your head if you wanted to use it as a phone without a headset -- this was both awkward physically and looked phenomenally stupid. * You had to remove the battery to get to the game cartridge slot! Again, really awkward. Really, the ergonomics overall were kind of baffling. * It had a portrait orientation screen that was slightly lower resolution than the Game Boy's, which made doing ports of games designed for the landscape orientation more common everywhere else more difficult. The updated "QD" version fixed a lot of the weirdness, and it's possible that if it had been the original N-Gage, things might have gone a lot differently. Of course, that's kind of a theme in the Nokia story in the mid-to-late 2000s, I think -- they got really good at shipping terrific products just a couple years later than they should have. If Symbian^3 and the N8 had come out in 2008 instead of 2010, Nokia's fate might have been pretty different. (Emphasis on "might," to be sure.)

LightG 4y ago
Obligatory: https://sidetalking.com/page-1.html https://sidetalking.com/page-1.html
dotancohen 4y ago
> They put the phone microphone and speaker on the side of the device. I actually drilled a few tiny holes in the side of my N-Gage so that I could hold it like a normal phone. The actual speaker was not near the edge, and was mounted such that its natural direction was towards the rear of the device. The N-Gage had a channel moving sound from the speaker out towards the side. I have no idea why they engineered the device like that. It would have been easier to just put a grill right where I drilled my holes.

commandar 4y ago

>and the more recent comments I've heard about it are along the lines of "underrated system that was ahead of its time". It always had a following, but the thing flopping wasn't because of the Slashdot crowd, it's because it just wasn't very good out of the gate. The N-Gage has an awful form factor that made it suck both as a gaming device and as a phone. Game cartridges were hidden behind the battery, button placement was awkward, and sidetalking became an early internet meme for very good reason. Nokia fixed a lot of the problems with a second generation release, but at that point the brand was largely poisoned.

eddywebs 4y ago
I think they changed that with Ngage QD next gen ngage loved that phone. Quite stable and powerful for an symbian os.