N-Gage on the Nokia E75
The E75 brings with it many ‘Firsts’ for Nokia. Apart from being their first Side-Slider formfactor S60 device, this is also the first Eseries device to feature N-Gage compatibility.
It’s also the first N-Gage device to have the new Side-Sliding-full-QWERTY-Keyboard form factor.
Now granted, N-Gage probably wasnt a priority on the E75, taking into account Nokia is marketing it as a Business-First device. Still, having been involved with the N-Gage community since it’s early days, I was inquisitive to know how the controls would translate onto this new entry into the N-Gage compatible devices list.
Now first of all, if you’ve read our first impressions, you’d know that I mentioned that the Menu Icons used on the E75 are the new Ovi Icons, and it is hard to know what’s a folder and what’s not, on your first experience with the device.
The N-Gage application is hidden inside the Media folder, inside the Applications Folder. Because of the aforementioned Icons and Menu setup, I didnt even know of the existence of the N-Gage client for the first couple hours of using the E75.
The N-Gage client on the E75 is at version 1.10.1385 which is newer than the version’s thats on Most N-Gage devices right now.
That being said, I couldnt find any ‘new’ features in this version. I’d say they fine tuned it for the E75, but that’s not the case.
Start up the N-Gage Client and you get the same familiar list at the beginning with your profile, last game played, Incoming Friend requests or Messages from the N-Gage Arena, etc. From there on, you can use the left and right keys to switch tabs to see the other views, such as your games, the N-Gage Game Showroom, etc. Nothing has changed there.
However, you do not want to slide the QWERTY keyboard out in this mode, because even though the N-Gage Client stays in Portrait mode (this cannot be changed), the Controls switch to landscape mode, which makes browsing though the Client a bit tedious. A small glitch, but one worth mentioning, because most newcomers to the platform, will wonder what the heck is going on if they’re in the same situation. Definitely something that needs to be fixed in an upcoming firmware, or N-Gage Application update.
Note: The same glitch happens if you slide out the keyboard in portrait-only games like Space Impact on N-Gage.
But enough about the Client, let’s move on to the games. The E75 can play any N-Gage compatible game, anything that’s listed in the showroom in the N-Gage client.
To check out N-Gage on the E75, we took Asphalt 4 as our ‘test game’. An arcade-ish racing game.
Unfortunately, here is where we discovered that the N-Gage application on the E75, only detects keys “Q” and “W” as gaming button “A” and “B” respectively. Nothing else is accepted as an input. What this means is, in any games you play, out of the huge amount of keys available on the E75’s large QWERTY keyboard, you’re only allowed to use “Q” and “W” keys in game, and the Dpad. This is pretty uncomfortable since you’re using your right hand to control the Dpad and left hand to use the gaming buttons, which is the total opposite of any major gaming control setup in this day and age.
I was hoping Nokia would be smart enough to allow you to use any key in game. Considering the Keyboard layout on the E75, wouldnt it be a lot easier and a lot more comfortable, if I could configure the ingame controls to use the “W, A, S, D” keys for motion controls instead of the D-pad and any keys on the right side of the Keyboard as Gaming button A and Gaming button B.
Update: Here’s a video showing you guys what I was talking about.
We checked out other landscape games, to see if this was an isolated bug, but it turns out to be the same case in all of them.
I’m hoping a upcoming firmware update, or an update to the N-Gage Client allows this, because really, it’s a missed oppurtunity.
Of course when it comes down to it, like I said earlier,the Nokia E75 is a business phone and N-Gage isnt really a priority on the device. That being said, it would have been nice if N-Gage worked properly on the E75, as it might be many people’s first experience with the platform, and with the current setup they probably wont enjoy it much.
This wont be a problem on the upcoming Nokia 5730 which has a similar formfactor, since it has two dedicated gaming keys on the top of it’s screen, and the Nokia N97 has a Dpad with it’s slide-out keyboard so that would probably work too.
With the current setup, the Nokia E75 might not be the most well-suited-for-N-Gage device out there. Still we’re happy to see N-Gage come to Eseries devices. This whole “annoyance” with only 2 keys being usable, can easily be fixed with a software update (we hope). We’ll just have to wait and see on that front. Till then, N-Gage is just a nice little extra that comes with the E75, that few will take seriously.
Share On Twitter & Facebook :
| Share |
Enjoyed this post?
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed for updates as they happen ! Or if you prefer, you can Follow us on Twitter or Fan us on Facebook instead !
