Nokia N-Gage QD

The N-Gage QD was an apology in plastic. When Nokia launched the original N-Gage in 2003 to challenge Nintendo's grip on handheld gaming, it became an instant punchline: users had to hold the flat, angular unit sideways against their head to take calls — the infamous "taco talking" — and swapping a game cartridge meant removing the battery. Nokia moved fast to repair the reputation, and the QD, unveiled in April 2004 and released that May, was the result.

The redesign was genuinely sensible. It was smaller and rounder, moved the earpiece to the front so the sidetalking embarrassment vanished, and relocated the game slot to the bottom edge so cartridges could be changed without disassembling the device. Underneath it remained a Symbian smartphone with a numeric keypad pressed into service as a gamepad, running the same library of ambitious but awkward mobile ports and originals like Pathway to Glory and a well-regarded Tomb Raider adaptation.

But the QD also stripped features to hit a lower price — losing the FM radio and MP3 playback of the original — and it could not fix the core contradiction. As a phone the keypad-and-screen layout was compromised for gaming; as a handheld it was more expensive and far worse supported than the Game Boy Advance, and it stood in the coming shadow of the Nintendo DS and PSP. Its games were few and its screen oriented awkwardly for many titles.

By February 2006 the whole N-Gage hardware line was discontinued after roughly two million units across both models — a fraction of its rivals. Nokia retreated to offering N-Gage as a software service on its smartphones. The device is remembered fondly as a noble, doomed early stab at convergence: the smartphone-as-game-machine idea that the iPhone would vindicate just a year after the QD died.