Nokia N-Gage QD Review

Overall Rating

The Nokia N-Gage QD is fairly small and lightweight, intuitive and dedicated gaming buttons, games are surprisingly good quality, home-brew applications available, takes now cheaply available MMC cards, extra features like calculator and voice recorder, screenshoth capabilities, a fair battery life, unlocked, the usual Nokia interface, bluetooth

In my experience - Awkward for texting, prone to crashing, not a lot of internal memory, no camera, no included phone to PC connection cable

During a shift at my job as a games sales assistant, my manager happened to notice me texting a friend on my Nokia N-Gage QD. "Do you actually use that as your mobile phone?" he asked me. "Yes I replied", to which he answered "Oh! Cool! I'm impressed."

Yes, someone out there does understand that the N-Gage is not what most would call a 'temporary fad', but can indeed function as a fairly decent mobile telephone as well as hand held games console.

I had been looking for one of these beauties for a while, out of sheer curiosity. I managed to pick up the Nokia N-Gage QD for a mere £20, relieved that I may actually be able to call someone without feeling like a stuffed turkey or similar. <> Seven months on and I can say I'm still happy with this phone. Games I own include Tony Hawks, Tomb Raider, Pocket Kingdom, Fifa, Super Monkeyball, Sonic, Rayman, Colin McRae Rally and The Sims. Some games are better than others, but that's another story.

Some of the best points about this phone are, in my opinion, battery life and extras. Manual discounting is something I do a lot of at work, so having the calculator to hand is very nifty. The Screenshot option is a nice extra too, and I like the fact I have the option of a loudspeaker during a call.

The one major downside to the gaming-style keypad is one-handed texting. I am an avid texter, but as I expected, I have gotten used to it, and most of the time I don't think about it any more. To some though, it would be a little bit of an annoyance, quite understandably.

The lack of camera is disappointing, but I wouldn't have expected one considering it was released as a gaming phone, not a camera phone, and also would have driven the price up and made the design more bulky.

Overall, I would recommend this device as it can be picked up rather cheaply. I now have a SE k800i, but something is making me delay the SIM switchover for the moment..........I must be in love.