In the midst of the fight between Nintendo and Sony for domination of not only gaming platforms, but online gaming,  wireless appliance developer Nokia this month has debuted its second generation N-Gage QD online gaming platform. It is a significant improvement over the earlier N-Gage.

The best sign of that change is in the price. Where the original N-Gage was about $200 – reasonable for a feature-rich cell phone but much higher than the typical handheld gaming platform -- the new N-Gage QD platform will retail at about $99 base price, much more in line with the typical gamers would expect.  

In terms of features, in  this new platform, Nokia has made significant improvements over the original. And I hope that in their anticipated  follow-ons to Gameboy and Playstation, respectively, the two market leaders learn from wannabe Nokia’s experience. Both seem on the verge of repeating the same mistakes on their next-generation handheld game platforms that Nokia made with its previous first generation N-Gage.  

As almost every builder of mobile communications and computing appliances has done, Nokia first chose the tried and true “more is better” strategy with little thought given to the nature of the users they were trying to attract. 

That approach worked well in desktop PCs because they were not limited by size, by battery life and because their users were by and large first time users of computers. They were willing to accept the downside of using a more is better anything machine -- while it can do almost any task with the right hardware and software installed,  it seldom does anything really well. 

But because of the more sophisticated user base and the limitations and size and power, more is better does not work as well in this new connected gaming environment -- a bitter lesson Nokia learned in its first generation N-Gage.  

On the original N-Gage, when faced with a choice between building a full featured cell phone with a gaming platform add on or a gaming platform with some wireless capabilities, it unfortunately chose the first.  

This time on the N-Gage QD they took the second route, which makes all the difference. They seem to have also figured out who their consumer is – not the average cell phone user who might be attracted to purchasing a unit because gaming is one of the features, but a gaming enthusiast who will buy it because it has some wireless capabilities that will make gaming more interesting. 

In the QD platform, they have taken out the built-in FM radio and the MP3 player. They have also scaled down its wireless phone capabilities including only those features that they think contribute to a communal gaming experience. But you can still use it as a mobile phone since it supports the Global System Mobile standard used by ATT Wireless, Cingular Wireless and T-Mobile.  

Outside basic phone functionality and solo game playing, what wireless capabilities it retains are all focused on supporting the gaming experience, especially its communal aspects. They have retained the ability to let gamers send email and multimedia messages and it has local Bluetooth WLAN capabilities to play against others across the room or in another room.  

When you choose to go online within the new N-Gage Arena, launched through  the game deck menu, you can play against other gamers worldwide, as well as meet other game players via email in a mode something like Instant Messaging.  

On the physical level, the original N-Gage platform was a real kludge and awkward as Hades to use. Much of that awkwardness has been ameliorated in the new version of the platform.  

Using the original N-Gage for phone calls was like holding a brick, a beer can or a “taco” to your ear -- anything but a cell phone. And the keys were not only placed illogically, they were not easy to access.  

The new N-Gage platform, at 6 ounces is slightly heavier than the original. But because of its oval shape and 4.8 x 2.7 x.87 inch size will fit into a pocket, albeit with a bit of a bulge and some sagging. And in the palm of the hand or up to the side of the head, it feels, as much as a mobile game platform can, more like a normal cell phone.  

The Nokia designers have done a good job on the keypad. It is to the right of the two-inch screen and can be used to dial using both thumbs – the right for the phone number entry and the left for the send key on the left side of the display as well as for the controller key to highlight menu icons or to move characters in a game.  

But unfortunately Nokia developers did not leave all of their cell phone bad habits behind. Like a cell phone, the N-Gage QD is not very intuitive to operate. It still requires reading the manual and memorizing some key entry combination needed to decipher the “secret handshake” needed to access some of the functions and become a full member of the gaming or cell phone club.  

Nokia also seems to have come to its senses about the N-Gage game cartridges, in their availability and how they are installed. At the introduction of the original platform, few game cartridges were available and were slow in coming. This time around, initially there will be about 25 titles and about 50 total by year end. Pricing is within the range of other gaming platforms,  between $25 and $40 per cartridge. 

The cartridges are also now hot swappable -- removable and insertable via a slot on the bottom front of the unit and without turning the power off. In the original platform it was necessary to remove the back cover, pull out the battery insert the game, stored in a Multimedia Card (MMC), replace the battery and the back cover and reboot. 

Nokia and its N-Gage QD will not displace either the Nintendo Gameboy or the Sony Playstation in the hearts, minds, and hands, of diehard gamers  any time soon. But it has this time around improved enough to be ranked a promising “contender.”

Pricing and Availability

Available through a variety of retail outlets and online starting this month, the Nokia N-Gage QD will retail for about $99 to $199.

(For access to more than 4,500 other hands-on product reviews on all variety of wired and wireless appliance and consumer devices, go to the iAppliance Web Portal Page. )

Manufacturer Nokia N-Gage Product Name N-Gage QD Game Deck Dimensions 4.65 x 2.68 x .87 inches (118 x 68 x 22 mm) Weight 5 ounces (143 g) with standard battery Local Area Connectivity Bluetooth WLAN Wide Area Connectivity Voice: dual GSM 850/1900 and EGSM900/GSM1800 Data: HSCSD to 43.2 kbps; GPRS to 40.2 kbps Processor/OS 104 MHz Arm CPU/ Symbian with J2ME Memory 3.4 MB DRAM internal + external memory cards (32, 64, 128, 256 MB); shared memory for all applications. Messaging Features Standard IMAP4,POP3,SMTP,MIME2; MMS multimedia messaging; Enhanced SMS; Instant Message with Chat Display 4096 color, 176 x 208 pixel two inch LCD display  Power Internal lithium-ion battery with up to 5 hours talk time; 10 hours game time: 11 days on standby. Game Features Hot swap MMC game cards via front slot; 50 games by year end; autostart on insertion; local and long distance online gaming via preinstalled N-Gage Arena launcher; HF speaker for phone/game sounds and vibration effects. iA/PDA  Features XHMTL browser; Java game downloads; WAP; Personal Information Manager; voice dialing; voice recorder; contact/dial listing, calendar, ToDo list, address book.