Nokia N-Gage - another "Handheld Hero"

The Nokia N-Gage is one of what I call the “Handheld Heroes”, these are 12 handheld devices that I consider to be icons of their time and are symbolic of a particular point of technological change in the last 30 – 40 years (ok, the pencil is quite a bit older than that 😀).

The N-Gage was an amazing device at the time and in many ways was way ahead of its time as far as mobile-location based gaming goes, long before Pokemon Go was a thing Nokia tried to do this but with limited (affordable!) mobile connectivity available it was too much of a challenge. Nokia deserves way more credit for some of the great initiatives they tried (Remember Nokia Push?).

Yep, it was a weird device to make calls on, especially the first version ("Sidetalking!'"), but that's not really what it was intended for and I loved mine. What's not to love about a phone that can play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater?

Posted on Feb 26, 2024

More by Rick Curran

View profile