There are several reasons to explain this, firstly the two phones themselves, namely N-Gage and N-Gage QD were in fact an unwieldy solution: size and product design proved unacceptable for mass production. Launched on May 2004, Nokia N-Gage QD was a seriously simplified version of its precursor as well as more compact and cheap, but even a considerable drop in price didn’t help the device to become popular and breathe life into the new trend. Another explanation can be found in the weak hardware platform, the models couldn’t compete with dedicated gaming consoles. Being a mean compromise between a limited communication functionality and a somewhat nerfed gaming capability, the N-Gage, despite of their initial positioning by the manufacturer, were hardly fit for the mass market.

Let’s try to understand what ideas were initially put into the game phone design. First of all, a manufacturer should present customers with new solutions, waiting for response. Mobile games are a perfect way to attract new audiences, especially the youth. In this situation the main goal, quite expectedly, is getting extra profit - and that can be achieved by selling mobile content. Initially N-Gage applications were exclusively limited just to the two devices of the same brand, but shortly after the protection was broken and the games became available to usual smartphones through tinkering with home-brewn hacks . The majority of mobile gamers no longer had to buy N-Gage (QD), as it was now possible to use a regular smartphone with richer features. So, the content sales went up and the pitiful device sales dropped even lower. This awkward situation seemed to be oppressive at the moment, but in fact everything went on in a different way. Naturally, the failure of N-Gage sales caused a refusal from further game phone production, but the platform itself was not forgotten and continued to develop and improve.

The idea itself, accordingly, was changed. After refusing from dedicated game device production the profit could only be gained from selling downloadable game content. So it’s obvious that the more devices would support such games, the more profit the manufacturer would receive, so finally Nokia N-Gage came to be not a device, but a software platform, and the company followed the trodden path. One of the most remarkable events was Nokia’s collaboration with Electronic Arts. EA is one of the main providers of N-Gage-oriented games. In 2006 among these games were Tetris, Tetris Mania, The Sims 2, Doom, FIFA 06, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 06 and FIFA Street 2. At Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) ‘2006 a few new games for this platform were presented as well - Creatures of the Deep, ONE, Pocket Aces, Pro Series Golf, Space Impact, System Rush: Evolution. Apart from the new generation of games for the third S60 revision, a number of already existing games, initially developed for N-Gage (QD), including a few by Eidos Interactive, were redesigned. Among other providers of games designed for N-Gage, we can mention Digital Chocolate, Capcom, Indiagames, Vivendi Games Mobile, Gameloft, I-play and others, the list will be permanently expanded, providing wider and wider variety of applications.

The Nokia company, co-operating with the well-known mobile game publishers, seeks to offer maximum comfort to gamers but the idea is not only about quality and various content, but also in the technologies applied. A few years ago while launching Nokia N-Gage (QD) these two devices missed possibilities which could provide additional conveniences, connected with games, content downloading, scores publishing and so on, online games and communities found realization as exclusive N-Gage Arena service, but the GPRS performance wasn’t enough for large data transfers Today’s technologies pose no limits to performance, data processing speed and hardware characteristics. High-speed wireless technologies used in of modern multimedia devices of the new generation provide comfortable and high-speed application search and downloading online games, and so on. Communities is one of the key moments in the new Nokia strategy, N-Gage Arena users can communicate with each other, download exclusive content, get access to ratings and game statistics, they get a chance to participate in different competitions and so on.

The company seeks to grant these features to as many customers as possible by introducing N-Gage functionality into every new phone they make if its hardware platform can support it. We should do justice to another important feature – a hardware 2D\3D accelerator is not for using the N-Gage software platform capabilities.

The beginning of the new trend

The first Nokia’s step towards developing a line of mobile gaming products was the mid-2006 introduction of the N93 model, that had THE! famous and well-known System Rush: Evolution game preinstalled the game was slightly redesigned to match new software and hardware requirements. Nokia N93 is based on Texas Instruments hardware platform, OMAR 2420 chip with graphics accelerator, so gaming capabilities of this smartphone clearly demonstrated what could be expected next. But Nokia N93 wasn’t positioned like a gaming smartphone, the preinstalled System Rush merely demonstrated the features of new processor, graphical features, the time for new N-Gage hadn’t come yet by that time. Basing on these facts, Nokia was preparing the market for a future game device advancement into the masses. Next appeared the gamer-friendly slider Nokia N95.
On 29 August 2007 at the Go Play! Arrangement Nokia introduced 2 devices initially supporting the N-Gage platform : Nokia N81 (plus its 8GB modification) and Nokia N95 8GB. “N-Gage” menu item calls up 5 options, switching is done by pressing the navigation key right and left, navigation reminds active idle. Home page hosts the list of messages received from your N-Gage community buddies as well as favorites, etc.

The N-Gage Interface

The N-Gage menu item splits into five categories which can be cycled through by pressing the navigation button left and right just similar to the standby mode:

In essense, N-Gage is an application which can be independently installed on any device that supports it. In the group, besides the recently presented novelties, we can mention Nokia N95, N93(i), and N73. The last one doesn’t possess a hardware 3D accelerator, but N-Gage. In future all new multimedia smartphones will support N-Gage game services with a less of more clear emphasis on the gaming side. The Nokia has been following the idea that all the features should organized as simply as they. Increasing the number of supported devices is the most important task for Nokia, game sales depend directly on this. An interesting fact is that new Samsung smartphones based off the S60 platform will also support N-Gage, they are fully compatible.

The conclusion is obvious: having started with producing and launching purely gaming devices with an ambitious yet not widely recognized potential Nokia step-by-step passed to content distribution backed with a wide range of devices supporting this kind of games but not at the expense of limited functionality. According to the words of the company’s reps, the N-Gage brand was purposely launched to represent dedicated gaming gadgets first, than the trademark comprised a vast number of phones from other market segments, sharing one common feature – the famed N-Gage software platform that came to replace the hard-coded N-Gage support of the early precursor devices.

The features of Nokia N-Gage will be discussed in a dedicated review, now it’s time to have a look at the new devices. Both Nokia N93 and N95 had integrated gaming functionality from the very beginning, but now the company exploits the opportunity to develop a whole dedicated family of such devices. Nokia N81 and its 8GB version display being distinctly positioned as gaming-oriented smartphones. The device possesses 2 dedicated buttons for gaming purposes located above the screen, invisible during standby. You might have a feeling that those are touchkeys but in fact it isn’t so: the buttons are real and neatly response to tapping just as the rest of the keys.

Nokia N81 utilizes the slider form-factor, its dimensions are rather small for a smartphone - 102х50х17,9 mm. The device neatly sits in the hand; the plastic has a glossy surface, which seems not quite practical for a gaming phone. The block of controls is notable for the presence of additional buttons active in the player mode – rewind, playback, pause, everything on this side is similar to what we observed with Nokia N91 except the location of the buttons. The controls block is absolutely flat, the polished buttons look stylish, but despite of this ergonomics hasn’t suffered at all, as it might seem at first. The buttons aren’t the touch-type (including the gaming ones), actually they’re real, rocker-type button that possess a good feedback and cause no troubles at all. The extra player buttons are not as comfortable as the rest, the problem lies behind their small size and a position too close to the navigation key and other controls elements. The button symbols are backlit only when the multimedia menu or the player are activated, otherwise they are not.

The so-called Navi Wheel is an interesting feature, it represents an area for operating the multimedia component – in player, radio, while watching video and so on. Navi Wheel itself – its exactly a navigation key, or to be more exact, its edges are. Navi Wheel has nothing in common with the player control buttons, only the silver (or blue) border is sensitive to the touch. The principle of operation is rather simple: in the music menu it allows to scroll the playlist in a rapid manner, you have just to pass the finger over the button clockwise or counter-clockwise, correspondingly scrolling goes up or down, in practice it’s very handy. Here lies a very distinctive difference between solutions offered by Nokia and the ones by Samsung, for example. The thing is that so-called touch sensor prinsiple is combined with the regular controls, i.e. a the navigation button equally reacts to regular strokes, and if that’s not to your liking, the option can easily be switched off in the appropriate menu. Then the navigation key will work only in the traditional way. Giving a more detailed description of how the sensor works, we’d note that, for instance, the tab browsing is possible both by passing the finger over the navigation key’s borders and by pressing the button left and right.

The majority of users are bound to be pleasantly surprised with the fact that Nokia resolved the problem in such a way – by combining the really innovative sensor control with standard, habitual ways. The thing is that the button has no moving parts, it’s completely static, but still reacts to the touch in a very specific manner. It indicates a user action reacting not to the bodily warmth of the finger (which is typical to most sensor-type control units) but rather to the mechanical friction alongside its surface. This is a real advantage the model, its unique feature, the development of this idea in future is going to bring exclusively positive results.

Nokia N81 isn’t a dedicated game device, it looks like a regular smartphone with an accordingly typical functionality, widely found with the last generation of such devices, its target audience is going to be maximally embracing. Yet the additional functionality like the game services is sure to turn out interesting to the consumers of entertainment-oriented solutions. That’s why the company are using a popular and rather cheap solution for advertising the new N-Gage platform, it’s popularization this approach seems to be successful in long run period. N81 is the first device focused on the gaming aspect unlike Nokia N95 8GB, which remained a universal all-in-one device with no particular focus on gaming. That’s why camera features are minimized in Nokia N81, the camera resolution is 2 Mpix only, the quality of photos is little below average. The videos are recorded at an VGA resolution; the frame rate is 15 fps, the video quality is mediocre. Unlike the camera, musical functions work fine, mainly due to the large amount of ROM memory (with the 8GB modification), very usable player controls and the standard 3,5 mm jack allowing for a 3rd party headset.

Let’s move on to the hardware specifications. The screen sports a resolution of 240x320, its diagonal is 2,4 inches, the color depth is 16M colors. The screen matrix used is one of the best available on the market, the image quality is very high. Traditionally it comes with a luminance sensor which automatically adjusts the backlighting depending on the environmental lighting. The only minus is the protective glass, casting rather strong glares across the screen should it face direct sunlight.

The model is based on a single-chip solution from Freescale, there is no double architecture, like in Nokia N95, so at many points Nokia N81 is similar to the N76, for instance. The advantage of the Freescale chip consists in a high performance for typical operations, the smartphone has almost reached the performance level of regular cell phones. But for a game-oriented device the situation is ambiguous. Like Nokia N73, which also supports installing N-Gage applications and, correspondingly, the whole existing range of applications for this platform, Nokia N81 runs all games without any observable limitations. There may be a number of explanations to this fact, the most obvious one being that not every application uses the hardware 3D accelerator functionality in top models, at least in such cases graphics rendering can be done by the less productive processor. For the end users, the difference is just theoretical, but on the mass market scale the usage of a cheaper single-chip platform grants the manufacturer numerous advantages mainly concerning the cost of hardware components and the product lead time. That factor is very important, considering the product being marketed mainly towards youth audiences. It’s not hard to guess that Nokia N81, being the first model designed in the new genre, is just an opening to a future line of gaming smartphones - the rush of inexpensive gaming devices is quite predictable in the nearest future. The trick is that though the target audience can’t afford an expensive handset it’s quite solvent in the long run, gradually purchasing content like games and music straight from the web.

But let’s get back to Nokia N81. The large stereo speakers are located on the side edges of the casing, providing for an almost ideal sound volume and quality, in this parameter the smartphone is comparable to the 6223 and N95 models, and there are no analogous devices to be found in other manufacturers’ portfolios. On the left there’s a MicroSD slot (there is none with the 8GB version), it’s protected with a plastic age. The bottom end features a microUSB slot gradually becoming a must for all Nokia models. Unfortunately the model has no in-built GPS module integrated. As for the software platform, the model nearly replicates Nokia N95 and many other devices by the company, since it’s based off S60 v3 FP1. Accordingly, all the base functionality of the platform is in. The standard battery has a capacity of 1050 mAh, that’s quite good meaning it stands for about two days of uptime. Comparing the device to Nokia N95, we should make a note about the significant advantage of the N81 over the former on this front, which is easily explained by the requirements aroused by the gaming and musical orientation of the model.

The sound quality stays on a very high level, but it’s important to see that Nokia N81 is not a music-oriented flagship of the company, and the real hi-end music device will hit the shelf in the beginning of 2008. But anyway, N81 provides a playback quality similar to that of Nokia N91, it’s comparable to or even better than the majority of other music-oriented phones available on the market. Having been tested using Nokia N91 bundled headset, both devices displayed almost similar results, while Nokia N95 has a worse sound output. So the possible replacing of N91 with the novelty is more than justified, since a long list of additional advantages comes along with the improved sound quality.

The multimedia menu outline was changed once again, now due to the circular browsing between tabs it the whole system looks fine and impressively useable. The menu is activated by pressing a dedicated button which was only used for activating the player in the N91 model. Among other features of N81 we’d note the presence of a keypad blocking slide button (like in Nokia N91), it’s placed on the top end of the device near to the 3,5 mm headset jack. The way it works is slightly modified, it no longer works like a toggle switch with two extreme positions similar to its forerunner, but rather consequently blocks and unblocks the keypad after each move of the slide button that automatically returns to its starting position. The sales package also includes a headset supplied with an AD-54 remote controls, which has also been redesigned to match the device’s appearance, the media buttons are flat. Also sound volume controls and the call response button were added, meaning that the remote control is now a very handy addition itself, since the release of Nokia N91 the company has established a reputation of a leading manufacturer of music-oriented solutions, especially when it comes to the player ergonomics. Other companies don’t seem to pay as much attention to the ergonomic aspect of the integrated mp3 players as Nokia does (introducing additional buttons and the remote control accessories).

The combination of maximally comfortable controls, a large amount of internal memory, the unified headset jack and the high sound quality makes Nokia N81 8GB an almost ideal music player, the smartphone has no direct competitors on the market considering the current price policies.

The price is doesn’t exceed €430 for the 8GB version and €360 for the regular one. The price is quite affordable, but the specs aren’t sky-high so we get a neat mass market product but little more than that.

	Main specifications of Nokia N81 8GB
Communications:	EGSM 850/900/1800/1900 + UMTS 2100
Storage:	128 of user memory + 8 Gb of integrated RAM
Display:	2,4" , QVGA (240х320), 16M
Communications:	USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, A2DP supported
Camera:	2 Мп (до 1600x1200)
Batter:	BP-6MT 3.7V 1050 mAh up to 240 min. of talktime up to 408 hrs. of standby
Dimensions:	102 x 50 x 17.9 mm
Weight:	140 g
Estimated price:	430 euros

The following features are to become iconic for the newly born class of gaming phones:

After a closer look at the marketing perspectives of the new N81 model, seen as a key product designed to promote the new gaming platform, everything becomes clear. The model is planned for mass production, it’s quite inexpensive and designed to cater to most audiences due to its neutral design, popular form factor and the largest amount of memory on board available on the market today, let alone the brilliant implementation of the player functionality - the product’s main audience will largely consist of people looking for mobile gaming opportunities, and the Nokia engineers did their best at making mobile gaming as comfortable as possible - up to the point where you don’t have to sacrifice any other features in exchange. The further success depends on the intensity of the advertising campaign, reaction of the market and a multitude of miscellaneous factors. Offering not a single, but several models that support such functionality the company will gradually become able to win a vast audience for the new gaming platform. But it’s going take a plenty of time, of course. In future Nokia is planning to introduce an increasing number of N-Gage devices, this trend is becoming of an increasingly high priority to the company. The preinstalled content offered by Nokia includes three demos of N-Gage games - Space Impact Light, the Asphalt race, Fifa Soccer 2007 by Electronic Arts. Though the opportunity to download N-Gage applications directly to the phone will appear later (at the same time with the release of the 17 mentioned games and, of course, a lot of new ones), only then we’ll be able to speak about how useable the support for this service is. The compay are planning to start distributing games in November 2007, by this time the company are planning to increase the overall count of available N-Gage games to 35, that is more than just sufficient to attract public attention to the N-Gage platform. The average cost of a game is €10, that is quite affordable for the majority of consumer considering the high quality of offered content itself – as, for example, almost such amounts of money we waste for buying music albums, films and games for PC.

With such an active position concerning the market of mobile gaming solutions, the variety of devices and quality games, Nokia have made a serious claim for leadership in the whole segment, the company’s positions are going to eventually improve, at least for the time being Nokia guys have all the trumps in their hands.

Simultaneously with the N-Gage announce, Nokia have presented an web service devoted to downloadable mp3 content dubbed Nokia Music Store, its base containing over 1 000 000 tracks by different performers, the price of a track is €1 , the price of an album – starting from €10 , a monthly subscription to downloadable content PC synchronization – €10. The price is quite standard for most European offers of such kind, time will tell how successful the project will be. The menu was expanded with an item titled “Pass to the music store”, that automatically redirecting you to the corresponding address www.music.nokia.com. The list of offered features is extensive, including a full-blown song search, access to ratings and statistics, planned downloads list, sample listening, PC synchronization via Windows Media Player.

But the most important novelty introduced by the Nokia company is the umbrella brand comprising multiple internet services., Ovi (http://www.ovi.com). Upon introducing this brand Nokia puts a focus on the aspect that will grow in importance for the company in future – providing the customers with various internet services. N-Gage, Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps – that’s what makes up Ovi for the time being, the list is going to extend with time. The developments in the field of the downloadable content distribution take one of the top lines on the company’s priority list, the recent acquisition of the Twango web portal looks rather illustrative of the company’s policy. Other major directions are the mobile TV and photography. Simultaneously with the launch of new mobile devices, the manufacturer is going to promote the Internet services using the mobile products as a powerful backup, a good example of a successful implementation of such a marketing strategy is the history of the Nokia Maps navigation service. Similarly to N-Gage Ovi will combine a number of opportunities offered by mobile communications, online communities and many other sources.

As a short summary we’d state that the announce that happened on August, 29 ‘2007 is a milestone for the Nokia company, and largely not due to the nature of introduced devices, but rather due to the public introduction of the new Nokia strategy concerning Internet services. The future belongs to providers of various web services, so after a period of time the production of purely hardware products will decline in priority for the company, yielding to a smart orchestration of both hardware and software solutions. It was the introduction of Ovi that Nokia had paid maximum attention to, the company’s to-do list includes such points as active development of web services, improving the communications system and promoting it to the target audience and going on offering new solutions. As we’ve already said, no mobile phone manufacturer has anything resembling the foundation erected by Nokia – today it includes the already functioning Nokia Maps, Media materials blogging through Flickr, Twango services, and the shortly expected launch of Nokia Music Store and Nokia N-Gage announced on 29 August.

A phone manufacturer offering extra content and web services might look weird against the background of mobile telecoms operators, - the kind of companies that ought to be primarily concerned with such stuff rather than the phone manufacturers, - but as long as this business is profitable, Nokia will stick to it and resolve misunderstandings between them and the operators by introducing monor differences between the operator versions of the devices and their SIM-free variants. Nokia introduces revolutionary ideas in a lot of spheres which is their key to success. Their point of view might differ from the traditional positions, but as long as this apocryphal approach proves more efficient than the old ways, there's no reason for frowning upon it. For instance, after the Nokia Maps service was launched, the maps were made free though before that you had to pay for them. Nokia Music Store offers a monthly subscription for mere ten euros and as long as you have an internet connection available, you can download anything you wish and listen to the music on the phone and on the PC alike. Nokia N-Gage offers quality games for 6-10 on average which is a truly unique deal for a mobile gaming device with GSM functionality. Of course N-Gage games tend to be more mainstream and less sophisticated in a speculative comparison with PSP and similar consoles, but in fact the two categories are incomparable and hardly can be deemed competitive products at all due to the obvious difference.

Of course, all these generous offerings influence the customer's way of thinking in a long-term outlook, that's why now there are conflicts emerging between the company and the telecoms operators over the Music Store business since Nokia offers the customer a more advantageous alternative to the existing services run by the operators. Mobile devices are designed largely for casual, mainstream gameplay and the quality of games offered by N-Gage is more than enough, while at the same time the audience is strikingly vast. Portable game consoles like Nintendo DS and Sony PSP belong to a much narrower, niche market as speculatively compared to what the N-Gage service is going to evolve into after the platform becomes popular and a large number of games designed for it emerge. It makes no sense trying to design a smartphone that will claim to be a replacement to existing full-blown portable game consoles, but having the gaming functionality as a complementary featuer allowing both for more or less decent gaming experience alongside with a full-blown GSM and musical functionality is actually a good compromise as seen in the case of N81. That's exactly what makes the 'multiclass devices' so popular on the mass market and thus profitable, provided that the products are backed up by a developed system of content distribution services.

Ovi – is a new business trend in Nokia's market activities. Having at disposal a huge user bace (the N-Gage potential includes some ten millions of compatible devices sold worldwide consisting of N95, N93(i) and N73 models), it's way easier to launch a system of services actual both for already released and upcoming models. The company are planning to raise the estimated profit from this system to about 50 percent of the total annual revenue by 2010.

The Motorola company follows the same path, but the expansion onto the web service provider market is planned to happen later according to the company managers’ vision of the matter. Of course, neither for Nokia nor for Motorola does the focus on web service providing indicate a refusal from producing mobile gadgets, it’s essentially impossible since both the software and hardware branches depend on each other, it’s no more than a revision of priorities to help the company stay profitable and competitive.

As for Nokia N81, our verdict would be as follows: the device looks extremely tempting to the customers because of its obvious potential, the musical functionality set at a high point, the same can be told about the build quality; the glossy plastic looks neat, yet it can’t be compared with mirror faces of numerous other phones. Nevertheless the similarly priced and positioned Sony Ericsson K850i (the comparison is not accidental, the model also sports a case made of black glossy plastic) left a much worse impression, judging by the material and build quality the N81 gives a much more pleasing feel. On the whole, it’s hardly disputable that the device will make a bestseller over a short period of time following its release, which is planned in November ‘2007. The model makes no milestone in the history of Nokia products as its functionality is limited due to a cheap camera module on board, but still it’s a very pleasant and interesting offering from an ordinary customer’s point of view. The device admirably fits its target audience, the musical and gaming functionality is realized in a most brilliant way. There’s a huge difference to be observed between the novelty and Nokia N95 along with its updated modification N95 8GB, as the latter is in essence a combined all-in-one device offered for a very high price hardly affordable to the masses, while N81 8GB is a dedicated device focusing on a few aspects in each of which it excels to an utmost point..

Author: Ilya Solovyov, editor@smape.com

SMAPE.com

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