So far seven phones have been announced as being compatible with the Next Gen N-Gage platform. Four of those phones, the Nokia N93, N93i, N95 and N95 8GB, have a TV Out ability, which means you can plug them into your television and use that as your main display. This can have tremendous potential for gaming, not just with N-Gage games but also emulated retro games. Click here to read more...

Our sister site All About Symbian recently did a series of articles about the TV Out feature on the original N95, but they could equally well apply to the other TV Out-compatible phones.

As well as plugging the N95 into a TV, the articles also connected it to a wireless Bluetooth keyboard, so the phone could be controlled from up to 10 metres away.

Modern Gaming on your TV Set

Here's AAS's article about playing modern phone games through a television:

TV Out on the Nokia N95 - Part 2: The N95 as a games console

You can also see a video of the games in action through TV Out over on the Unofficial Nokia Gaming Blog:

Using the N95 as a games console

Retro Gaming on your TV Set

Here's AAS's article about retro gaming through a television:

TV Out on the Nokia N95 - Part 4: What retro computers have become?

As well as arcade games, the addition of the wireless full-sized keyboard means you can also play retro text adventures and interactive fiction:

Non-gaming stuff on your TV Set

Apart from gaming, you can also use any other function of your TV Out-compatible smartphone through the television set. The rest of AAS's articles covered these more serious functions:

TV Out on the Nokia N95

Part 1: Will the smartphone eat the PC? & How to connect N95 TV Out to a TV

Part 2: The N95 as a games console

Part 3: Word Processing, Spreadsheets and PowerPoint on the Big Screen

Part 4: What retro computers have become?

Part 5: Communicating through your TV set

Part 6: The problems with TV Out, and how they could be solved