At a virtual launch event Nokia has unveiled the Nokia N79, Nokia N85 and Nokia N96. All of these devices will be N-Gage compatible, and the N96 and N85 include dedicated gaming keys thanks to their dual slider mechanism, like the slider and keys on the N95. All three devices come with ten N-Gage games pre-loaded, but as far as we can tell these are locked demos rather than full unlocked games.
Read on in the full article.
BTW the N96 had been unveiled before, but the N85 and N79 had never been officially unveiled and for some reason Nokia decided to put all three together in this event.
Anyone know if these phones have the 3d chips in them? Its a deal clincher for me as my mate showed me the difference between the software & hardware powered graphics on Quake2 running on his n95 8gb!
Textures looked hi-res & crisp with awesome lighting when the game used the graphics hardware. Looked a bit pixelly & cartoony without.
If im gonna invest a lot of money in Nokia & N-gage then id much rather the graphics were more ps2 than ps1.. To future proof myself & all that. I notice the n81 is marketed as a gaming phone but has no graphics chip.. How ridiculous.. I had to check many websites b4 i could believe something so absurd! Games with great gameplay might as well look good too- If ur gonna have sex it might as well be with Jessica Alba rather than Barbara Bush if u know what i mean!
Anyway i digress. I want n-gage & these phones r within my price range. I just hope they'll make my games look more Picasso than Pissploppo.
I don't know what the accelerator status is on these models, will find out though. The N95, N95 8GB and N82 all have the chips and are all N-Gage compatible, so if you want to make sure you get a phone with a chip get one of those (I would recommend the N95 and N95 8GB as their horizontal media keys also work as gaming keys, so you can play like on a handheld console).
But I think you're WAY overdoing the importance of accelerators on phone games. These are games that run on 2 inch screens, and these are phones with very fast processors compared to other portable devices. The difference that a graphics chip can make in these circumstances is fairly limited.
I notice the n81 is marketed as a gaming phone but has no graphics chip.. How ridiculous.. Games with great gameplay might as well look good too-
Do you know what a graphics chip actually does?
The ONLY thing accelerators do is take strain off the main processor when creating 3D graphics.
But the processors on these phones are very fast, so they can do console-quality graphics entirely through software, they don't really need accelerators.
For example these games look better than anything on the Nintendo DS, but they don't use the accelerator at all:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kMgqCH6i3fw
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GReDak4weqo
Its a deal clincher for me as my mate showed me the difference between the software & hardware powered graphics on Quake2 running on his n95 8gb!
Textures looked hi-res & crisp with awesome lighting when the game used the graphics hardware. Looked a bit pixelly & cartoony without.
That wasn't an official release, and the file size of the accelerated Quake 2 is far too large to be sold as a download.
Quote:
"Tzer2
BTW the N96 had been unveiled before, but the N85 and N79 had never been officially unveiled and for some reason Nokia decided to put all three together in this event."
In fact, Nokia annouced today the N96 for North America! N96 for Europe was announced, as you said, before. Maybe 3-4 months ago.
Radu
Cheers thanks im looking through the n-series portfolio but will still go for the n85, if it has graphics accelleration, above all else due to its form factor & software.
I cant help but be slightly baffled by ur unconcern for tastier looking games where available. If i bought a new tv i wouldnt buy a 'SD' set if i knew they'd be broadcasting in HD after December.
Yes the Quake2 file is not an official release but surely it is representative of what the hardware is capable of. The visual 'wow' factor of Quake2 is what actually led me on the road to discovering n-gage in the first place.
Seeing games like System Rush & Asphalt 3 run through a tv was like watching a wire frame Neo Geo game of old.. Nothing spesh.. But games with graphics acceleration (quake2 & some crash bandicoot racing game) looked very ps2-esque, eliciting many nods of approval & interest from my non-gaming family! Yes graphics are no substitute for gameplay.. But people are drawn to graphical wizardry. Its the hook that reels them in, gets them talking, gets them buying games. I notice that in a couple of years mobile phones are to come fitted with mini-projectors.. How r ur software powered graphics gonna look on a 42inch display on ur bedroom wall?
Also, u know as well as i do that if a cpu has a gpu to lay textures & handle lighting for it, then it frees up power to crunch more triangles & take care of more complex AI etc.. Allowing deeper, more intricate & more visually stunning titles catering for the more hardcore n-gagers, whilst giving casual gamers a bit more eye candy for their money, & non-n-gagers the visual impact that gets them talking when someone whips it out at the pub!
Perhaps graphics acceleration is not a big issue now as N-gage is fresh out of the womb, but if im to invest in an N-series phone to last a couple of years i damn well want graphics acceleration as the games, for reasons outlined, will ultimately be of a higher quality. Quality i-phone titles have graphics acceleration as standard, and i see that n-gage devices sporting gpu's will be supported after Xmas.. There's no way in hell im buying an n81 'gaming' phone.. Or an n85 if it comes without the ability to give my eyes an orgasm.
..
omg last few day's have made choosing my next phone 10x harder lol
i quite like n85 but i don't know if i could get used to playing n-gage on a smaller screen but i will wait and see b/c it as everything else i need.
i would get n96 if it was'nt for having to pay so much for a feature what can't be used in majority of Country's.
Oh btw guy's Dogz appeared in device showroom last night for all of 30 minutes before it got took of device again lol,i managed get my download in time though not played it much yet though but from what i see it's easier than sims😛ets lol
Just to make things clear, Nokia have promised to include accelerator chip support in the next N-Gage SDK so we probably will see chip support in future games. There will be two versions of some games, one for phones with chips and one for phones without chips.
But people are drawn to graphical wizardry. Its the hook that reels them in, gets them talking, gets them buying games
Not on phones it isn't. The best-selling phone game of recent years is EA's re-release of Tetris.
Phones are not consoles, people don't buy them for games. But even on consoles it's no longer the graphics that matter, as the success of the Wii and DS will testify. Nintendo's consoles are a generation behind their rivals, even Nintendo admit this, but they're outselling all their rivals put together.
I cant help but be slightly baffled by ur unconcern for tastier looking games where available.
It's not about better graphics, it's about whether a dedicated graphics chip makes much difference on a screen that small.
If the chip doesn't make much visible difference, then you are probably wasting your money by paying extra for a phone that has one.
If the screen was bigger, for example on a PSP-sized device, then yeah a graphics chip would probably be a great idea.
But most N-Gage games are probably going to be played on the cheapest phones, because it's the cheapest phones that sell the most (the average phone sale price is something like 100 euros excluding taxes and subsidies), and the cheapest phones have the smallest screens.
We've also got to remember that most people probably aren't buying Nseries phones for games, they're probably buying them for other things like calls, e-mails, music, photos, web browsing, messaging, video, mobile TV etc none of which benefit from graphics chips. For these people there really is no point at all adding a graphics chip because they would never use it.
If i bought a new tv i wouldnt buy a 'SD' set if i knew they'd be broadcasting in HD after December.
Actually that example illustrates my point exactly.
In studies of HDTV, they've found that most people can't tell if it's HDTV or SDTV when the screen goes below about 20 inches, because most people watch it from their sofa which is about 2 -3 metres away. You might be able to tell the difference at point blank range (which is how shop sales staff try to sell it to customers) but no one watches television that way in real life.
In other words, if you buy an HDTV with a screen below 20 inches, you've wasted your money.
It's the same with graphics chips, once a screen gets below a certain size the value of graphics accelerators is questionable.
There's also download sizes. Phone games have a size limit of about 30 megabytes if you want to make them available through the phone network, so they don't really have room for too much texture data (the Quake 2 game you played on an N95 8GB was MUCH bigger than 30 megabytes).
Just to point out that I don't agree with Tzer2, I have an N95 and I CAN TELL the difference between a HWA game and a non HWA game, even in that "small" screen. Have you tried Global Race? It looks great, I would say it looks much better than Asphalt 3 (Ngage 2.0). Another example, the SRE demo (HWA) vs. SRE (Ngage 2.0). And by the way, the HWA games run smoother than the non HWA. HWA is one of the reasons I bought an N95, and please don't tell me that the size of the file (Q2) is a reason to keep it out of the question, because several Ngage 2.0 games are very close to that size. Maybe for you it's the same or has no importance, but for me (and I can see I am not alone in this) HWA is important, after all Nokia answered with support for HWA in their next version of the Ngage SDK, in response to popular demand in their forums. Regards.
By the way, you say that these phones have very fast processors and because of that there is no difference, well again, try to run Global Race on an N81 (There's a video in youtube comparing performance between N81 and N95). Regards.
Yes it is frustrating to hear someone say that that hwa makes no difference on a small screen when there are countless examples to prove the contrary. I knew my eyes worked.
With regard to that Quake2 file, 2/5ths of the file comprises of mp3 files. Leaving just under 60mb devoted to everything else. I read on Pocket Gamer that N-gage games have a limit of 64mb, meaning that, with exemplary programming, producing something as graphically rich with sophisticated AI should be no problem (and remember how old Quake2 is anyway). The difference between the software and hardware powered graphics is very noticable if you play the game, even on the small screen. I think ppl without the hardware acceleration will start to notice in a few months time after the new sdk is released, particularly thoses who play with tv-out. And by that time I'll be happy I've bought a phone that pleases the eye more.
I know your the boss Tzer2, but with all due respect I think you need to drop this one.
Fireseed wrote:By the way, you say that these phones have very fast processors and because of that there is no difference, well again, try to run Global Race on an N81 (There's a video in youtube comparing performance between N81 and N95). Regards.
You must be talking about this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8IfFj3CN_I
I must admit that video you mention convinced me early this year to purchase my N93 over the N81, it did surprise me the difference the chip appeared to make in that video.
Of course 3D chip aside I made poor choice in the end as the N93 seems to remain forever "NGage support coming soon", but that's another topic🙄
As for the new NGage phones(N79, N85 & N96), I can't say I'm keen on the look of them personally, I don't like how so many of the new NGage phones seem to be following on from the N81, the d-pad doesn't look nice for gaming and the keys don't appear tactile either. I think I'll continue to wait for a new NGage phone with a nicer gaming d-pad(as gaming is a big part of my mobile phone buying decisions).
And the 6220 classic? No? Ah well, wont have mine for much longer, good riddance to FP2. USB2 was the only + point.
I have to wonder if they will ever support E series on Ngage. Business phones to be sure, but that doesnt mean people dont want to have games on them.
Although I suspect they would get put to the back of the pile when sorting out compatibilty is concerned.