Goodeye18 provides a comprehensive review of the Nokia N-Gage.

Introduction

You notice two things pretty quickly when you first open your new Nokia N-Gage. First, it’s a lot smaller than you think it will be.  Second is that this thing is not so much one gadget as the ultimate Swiss Army Knife of gadgets. The face of the N-Gage has so many buttons and controls that there’s one for just about anything you may want to do.

I've been playing (and productively using) my new N-Gage for the last week. I think the important thing to remember about the N-Gage is that it is going to be different things to different people, and people's opinion will depend on their perspective. So what is the N-Gage like, a gaming machine, a mobile phone?  Mixed is the answer. The actual unit is nice. It's smaller than it looks in pictures. The device isn't very deep so it actually feels small and slips into a pocket more easily than some other Series 60 Smartphones like the 3650. The high-res screen is bright and backlit - it's almost as good as some many Sony Clies I've used. The fact that the screen is taller than it is wide takes a bit of getting use to. However for games it's a great advantage - anything that scrolls down from top to bottom for example, and when you have a 3D environment its much better having the extra height. At the same time the width is never really an issue - probably because the games have been designed with that in mind.

Gaming

There are really only 3 buttons that you'll use regularly in a lot of games - the control pad (four ways and click down), and the two main game playing keys (numbers 5 and 7 on the keypad). These are raised so they are easy to find. I found the tactile feedback very nice. The control pad is poor compared to the joystick controls you get on the modern consoles but is better than a Gameboy or any other of the Series 60 devices (good thing too!). The best thing about it is that it is responsive - you do not have to kill your fingers. In some games other buttons are used (e.g. Tomb Raider), this is where having a full phone keypad really comes into its own. Rather than some complex combination of button presses (or even worse game intelligence deciding that a button should do x at time y) you can press one of the subsidiary buttons and get what you want. Lara pulls her guns when you want to not when the game wants you to!

Switching games. Ahhh. This is what will get most people. You have to take the back of the device, remove the battery and only then can you switch over the MMC card. It's a bit of a pain in the neck. But it doesn't take long and it keeps the MMC secure. It would be better if you didn't have to remove all the bits (you get visions of loosing the battery down the back of the bus seat). But it's no big deal at the end of the day. It's not like it makes playing games worse. I rather like having the MMC nice and secure. The fact you have to reboot to start a new MMC game not that much of a pain either. It takes me about 15 seconds to turn the unit off, take the back cover off pop out the batter and switch the games, it really isn’t all that bad to switch games around. This is pretty good. I took my unit back to the store I bought it at and asked the clerk how quickly he could change the games it took him about one minute and six seconds. But believe me once you get the hang of switching games you will beat it in no time!

Also you can connect via Bluetooth for multiplayer. Or connect to the N-Gage Arena (Select games only) to play people head to head via GPRS.