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Nokia N-Gage QD Review
Review by Guest Contributor on Saturday December 18, 2004.
By guest contributor James Paterson.
Nokia N-Gage QDTo begin with, I'd like to point out I was never a fan of 'side talking'. The fact that the original N-Gage had to be held like a taco in order to make a call never really appealed to me. Combine this with the awkward game-swapping mechanism (field stripping a phone in a busy place is just asking for trouble); you can see why I wasn't the original N-Gage's biggest fan.
Happily enough, Nokia has picked up on these faults and redesigned the N-Gage, the result being the rather nice N-Gage QD.
Design
The end product looks a world different from the original N-Gage - the urban camouflage that featured so prominently on the original device has now been replaced with a more universal black and silver look that should appeal to more people. The device also now features a large and slightly bulky piece of rubber that fits around the edge of the entire phone, but more on that later.
The QD is significantly shorter from top to bottom than the original model, 118mm x 68mm x 22mm compared to the N-Gage's 134mm x 70mm x 20mm, and weighs in at 143g, a full 5g lighter than the original device.
The most obvious design 'glitches' seen in the original N-Gage have also been resolved - the microphone and speaker have been positioned on the front of the device, meaning you can now speak into the phone with it held flat to your face, as opposed to the original N-Gage's side-talking configuration.
Also new to the QD is the repositioned memory card slot - now at the bottom of the device. The slot is covered when not in use by the aforementioned rubber ring (complete with a flap that locks in place to stop dust from getting inside). The charger and headset ports are also covered in this way. While having the ports covered is undoubtedly a good thing, I can't help but feel there must be a better way to do this. As is, whenever the device is charging, the rubber flap needs to be lifted and is held up by the charger lead. Because of this, after a few months of charging, the charger flap started to tear and actually started to distort the shape of the rubber band, leaving a large gap at the top of the phone where the rubber has lifted.
The good news is new rings are available; however this really does seem like a case of bad design.
