Planned successor to Nokia N-Gage QD found! ("N-Gage IC")

[derSammler]

Not sure if anyone here is into collecting N-Gage stuff, but I am and found a very nice piece of history lately: a prototype of the planned successor to the QD.

 

Posted some first infos on my website: http://retro-net.de/?id=89

 

Since it's in German, here's a quick summary: early prototype from September or October 2004. Runs Symbian 7 instead of 6.1 and adds the USB port back as well as a camera. Compared to the QD, it has twice as much internal memory. RAM is the same, however (16 megs). The CPU *seems* to be slightly faster, at least it seems so from testing some S60 games on it. Also, the MP3 hardware decoder from the NEM-4 was re-added. The fm radio apparently not (if it was, they forgot to include the radio app...).

 

Update 2021-10-07:

 

The following specs can be assumed as being confirmed:

 

• CPU running at 123 MHz (QD: 104 MHz)
• 16 MB RAM (same as QD)
• 8 MB internal memory (QD: 4 MB)
• Symbian OS 7.0s with custom UI designed by Saadi Howell, Nokia Design Center California
• MP3 playback
• Integrated camera (1024x768)

 

The integrated camera was the main feature as has been confirmed by Frank B. (Nokia Germany). From that, the name "N-Gage IC" (IC = Integrated Camera) used by Saadi Howell in his UI concepts was derived from. It's unclear, however, if that would have been the name for the final product.

 

More details to follow.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 7, 2021 by derSammler

[Mikebloke]

Interesting stuff! Keep us posted! Will definitely follow this topic. I have to admit I did research into starting an N-gage collection and started scoping prices for games etc, but never made the leap in the end.

 

Would the upgrade to Symbian 7 come with any benefits if it was properly released? I tried a quick google but other than its increased capacity to spread malware I don't know what other features it has over 6.1!

[derSammler]

Support for EDGE and IPv6 mainly.

[derSammler]

Since I can't edit my older posts already...

 

Compared to the QD, it has twice as much internal memory. RAM is the same, however (16 megs). The CPU *seems* to be slightly faster, at least it seems so from testing some S60 games on it. Also, the MP3 hardware decoder from the NEM-4 was re-added. The fm radio apparently not (if it was, they forgot to include the radio app...).

Edited October 2, 2021 by derSammler

[BodyZ]

On 10/2/2021 at 11:11 AM, Mikebloke said:

Interesting stuff! Keep us posted! Will definitely follow this topic. I have to admit I did research into starting an N-gage collection and started scoping prices for games etc, but never made the leap in the end.

 

Would the upgrade to Symbian 7 come with any benefits if it was properly released? I tried a quick google but other than its increased capacity to spread malware I don't know what other features it has over 6.1!

Upgrade to Symbian 7 would mean a lot now, and back that too.

 

Firstly, Symbian 7 introduced new format for apps, and many developers quickly jumped in and started to make their apps requiring Symbian 7 (more specificaly S60v2.0) as minimum OS version to run their apps.

 

As of today, we would have ability to use Opera Mini in SIS format on N-Gage. And many other apps that you could use even to this day.

 

Also, S60v2.0 added many new standard apps like File Manager and Connection manager. And new feature for compression of binary files, so generally thier size is twice as small.

 

Removed stupid restriction, where you couldn't install SIS app if size of it's contents is greater that free phone memory, even thou you had plenty of space on memory card.

 

And we would have ability to make hard reset via pressed keys - call button, * and 3 with Power button simultaneously to format phone memory in case we installed something that bricked our N-Gage game deck.

Well, we eventualy got that ability in firmwares with version greater than 4.10 for QD, but only selected regions recieved that firmwares, and for the most of the world 4.10 is latest firmware with their language supported.

 

In short, it would be a huge and very important upgrade. To bad it never got released.

[derSammler]

Pictures of the pcb. Confirmed now that it was made in October 2004 (week 41/04, as printed on the pcb)

 

 

[DirkDagger]

Nice one. Looks I'm also need to post some my photos from 2018, when I first found this buddy.
>Here's< I also posted quick background that related to that cancelled Nokia N-Gage device,

and also attached many my internal/external photos of it's HW in original size.

And btw, the official commercial name of the unit planned to be "N-Gage IC". So, you can update the thread name from:

'Planned successor to Nokia N-Gage QD found!' to the 'Nokia N-Gage IC. Cancelled Nokia N-Gage and N-Gage QD Official Successor.",

for the better indexation. But that's for sure for your choice.

Edited October 4, 2021 by DirkDagger
Photos added.

[derSammler]

First-hand information from the person who designed this unit's pcb (and many other's) at Nokia Germany, Bochum is being prepared. May take a week or two before it's ready, but it will be worth the waiting.

Edited October 4, 2021 by derSammler

[BodyZ]

17 minutes ago, derSammler said:

First-hand information from the person who designed this unit's pcb (and many other's) at Nokia Germany, Bochum is being prepared. May take a week or two before it's ready, but it will be worth the waiting.

Can you, please, post photos of this unit in switched on state?

Would be pretty awesome to see S60v2.x running on N-Gage hardware)

[Punisher5.0]

On 10/2/2021 at 6:43 AM, derSammler said:

Since I can't edit my older posts already...

 

Compared to the QD, it has twice as much internal memory. RAM is the same, however (16 megs). The CPU *seems* to be slightly faster, at least it seems so from testing some S60 games on it. Also, the MP3 hardware decoder from the NEM-4 was re-added. The fm radio apparently not (if it was, they forgot to include the radio app...).

I turned on editing for your first post so feel free to update it

[derSammler]

26 minutes ago, BodyZ said:

Can you, please, post photos of this unit in switched on state?

Sure, will post some pictures in a moment.

 

22 minutes ago, Punisher5.0 said:

I turned on editing for your first post so feel free to update it

Thanks!

[derSammler]

Here you go:

 

 

 

 

There's no N-Gage-specific stuff in that early firmware. More or less stock Symbian 7. Version number (with the decimal point shifted) seems to be in line with the one for the 6600 - at least very close.

Edited October 4, 2021 by derSammler

[BodyZ]

Wow, thanks a lot!

 

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Most likely it's as much generic as possible build of S60v2.0 or even S60v2.1 (both of them are based on Symbian 7.0s).

 

Have you tried installing and running 3rd party apps on this unit that show system information or benchmarks like SPMark04 and JBenchmark?

It would be great if you posted some results from these benchmarks.

 

And I think community would be really gratefull if you installed some 3rd party file manager like X-plore from LCG and made a copy of contents of Z:/ drive.

We could than compare it to other S60v2 devices software-wise, to determine what device firmware was taken as foundation for this unit.

And maybe we would be able to find out something more from it. Does it have some game specific adaptions and etc.

 

Oh, and one more thing. I guess keypad PCB is 1:1 like in retail unit?

 

P.S. From the photo of your PCB it seams like this unit got slightly faster CPU from 3230 or any other S60v2.1 device, which runs at 123 MHz, or maybe even CPU from 6620 with 150 MHz frequency)

Oh, and you posted that you've tried "some S60 games on it". But what about N-Gage games? Do they run?

 

[derSammler]

I did try FExplorer so far (works, but sometimes causes the phone to reboot when scrolling the folder list) and games like Geopod XE, Stunt Car Extreme, Tomb Raider Legend. As already written: yes, they run faster, so the CPU has more power. They run as fast as on my overclocked NEM-4.

 

Going to look into sysinfo tools and benchmarks.

 

The keypad pcb is almost the same, but not exactly.

 

I tried a hand-full of N-Gage games from which only CMR somehow worked (wrong colors).

Edited October 4, 2021 by derSammler
typo

[BodyZ]

OK. Thanks for clarification about how much faster is this unit compared to retail ones.

 

Yeah, looking forward for at least SPMark04 results, so we can more precisely take a guess which frequency is this unit's CPU is running.

 

Information about wrong colors is very interesting. 

I had experience with this when I was doing some kind of research on how N-Gage games run on non-N-Gage devices like 6600, 3230, 7610, 6630, 6680, N70 etc.

And CMR 2005 is a game that on every of this device had wrong colors problem. And all of them have displays with more colors that N-Gage decks.

So, most likely this unit also have 65K colors display, like 6600 or 3230.

 

Oh, and I guess you've tried games only from cartridges? 

I think the reason why you wasn't able to run most of games is incompability with .dll from cartridges with .dlls with same name in devices ROM.

Because this is the most common reason why N-Gage games won't start on non-N-Gage phones.

So, if you are interested I may provide you with some N-Gage games roms that run on non-N-Gage devices, and you could try them on your unit.

This way we at least would know reason why you couldn't run most N-Gage games.

Edited October 4, 2021 by BodyZ

[derSammler]

I'm not sure about more colors. I know that issue, as I have a 6600 myself and for the fun of it, tried it with N-Gage games. Yes, CMR behaves the same on the 6600. However, there's a huge difference: on the 6600, you can immediately see the wider color space already when the OS boots. On the proto however, you can't. It looks the same as on a normal QD, and it also shares the same LCD screen (which I assume can not even show more than 4096 colors, since it is 3-bit RGB). Probably just the result of Symbian 7 handling colors different internally.

 

I tried 3 real cards and 3 cracked/demo versions. I know about the DLL issues and such. I will certainly do much more testing. Ideally, I want to check every single game, but that is time-consuming.

 

11 hours ago, BodyZ said:

So, if you are interested I may provide you with some N-Gage games roms that run on non-N-Gage devices, and you could try them on your unit.

Sure, why not. Will make testing faster I guess.

Edited October 5, 2021 by derSammler

[derSammler]

CPU is reported by x-plore as running at 123 MHz, btw.

[BodyZ]

I showed photos of your PCB to my friend who is well versed in phones hardware and he pointed some very interesting facts about it.

 

If you compare PCB of this unit and retail N-Gage QD, we can see there are two additional chips.

 

One is for the FM Radio, and it's the same chip like on Nokia 3230 and 6260, which are also Symbian 7.0s devices (S60v2.1).

 

And the other one is for USB, and it also was common for S60v2.1 Nokia Symbian devices at a time.

 

And he confirmed my guess, that this unit doesn't have hardware MP3/AAC decoder like on NEM-4 N-Gage.

Most likely it plays MP3 with software decoding, which was first introduced in S60v2.1.

6600 is S60v2.0, and thus doesn't have this feature.

 

Unfortunatelly, there is no way to know exact CPU frequency over the software means on Symbian.

What apps like X-plore and other show as CPU frequency is actually read data from hal.dll libriary.

But in this one case it seems to be true, because from what we know about this device now, it is very similar to 3230 and 6260.

[BodyZ]

I think we should start testing N-Gage games for non-N-Gage devices with this.

 

I don't know it's origins, but the fact is that both this versions of Asphalt Urban GT are for S60v2.x and doesn't run on N-Gage native hardware.

 

I guess it was leaked by someone from Nokia or Gameloft a long time ago.

One version from these should run flawlessly. Maybe even both.

 

 

Asphalt_Urban_GT_S60v2.0.zip Asphalt_Urban_GT_S60v2.1.zip

[derSammler]

42 minutes ago, BodyZ said:

One is for the FM Radio, and it's the same chip like on Nokia 3230 and 6260, which are also Symbian 7.0s devices (S60v2.1).

 

[...]

 

And he confirmed my guess, that this unit doesn't have hardware MP3/AAC decoder like on NEM-4 N-Gage.

Most likely it plays MP3 with software decoding, which was first introduced in S60v2.1.

Sorry, but I have to disagree here. First, the chip that did FM radio on the NEM-4 also did the MP3 decoding (there was another helper chip, but that didn't do decoding). I don't see why they would have added a gelded chip that does FM radio only to this unit. Also, as written, there's no FM radio app. But it plays back MP3 files in stereo using the same app as the NEM-4 did. That's certainly not done in software, as the CPU is way too weak for that. Let's just wait for the write-up by the guy who designed the pcb before making too many guesses.

 

Going to test the two versions of Asphalt later this day.

[derSammler]

Besides, one of the two additional chips, the STV0976, is actually the camera controller, data sheet here:

 

https://www.digikey.at/htmldatasheets/production/471048/0/0/1/stv0976.html

 

So sorry to say, but your friend isn't that well-versed it seems (no offense, just concluding).

Edited October 5, 2021 by derSammler

[derSammler]

2 hours ago, BodyZ said:

One version from these should run flawlessly. Maybe even both.

Both are working just fine.

[BodyZ]

Okay, let's wait what guy who designet it's PCB have to say and stop guessing)

 

Both versions of Asphalt running is great news.

Let's continue testing with something less "compatible" with non-N-Gage hardware.

[BodyZ]

Here.

 

Rayman 3 shold run flawlessly.

Operaion Shadow should run fine, only have wrong colors in loading screens, but normal ingame.

Sims on non N-Gage device tend to stuck forever on loading. Would be interesting how it will work here.

Operation_Shadow.zip Rayman_3.zip The_Sims_Bustin_Out.zip

[derSammler]

Thanks. I'll report back later.