The Manifold Failures Of The N-Gage, Part the Third

As every avid BuzzSponge reader knows, we're no stranger to taking pot-shots at the strategic and design shortcomings of Nokia's hapless GameBoy/cell phone, the N-Gage. This will probably are last N-Gage-related potshot. Not only is making fun of the N-Gage's shortcomings like shooting fish in a barrel, we're sure after failing to understand its target market (see our article on the subject here), launching the N-Gage to, uh, less than impressive sales (selling 5000 units worldwide, despite Nokia's insistent claims that it would sell in the "millions and millions"), and then having their N-Gage hacked (yesterday, hackers devised a way to not only copy the N-Gage's games, but to play them on other--much cheaper, and better--phones), the team behind the N-Gage is well-aware at this point that they're probably about to become a case study in how not to launch a product. But before we invoke the mercy rule, we couldn't resist but post a link to the following site devoted to making fun of the N-Gage's ridiculously stupid (and not stoopid fresh) design, SideTalkin. (With only 5000 users worldwide, most people won't have seen an N-Gage in use, so we'll take a second to explain the joke behind the site: in order to make the N-Gage more cool, avant-garde, or possibly just more obtuse, Nokia's product designers decided to make users hold the phone like a pizza slice to their head in order to make calls. To explain this, take your cell phone, and hold it sideways to your head, rather than simply so that the speaker/mike face in front or behind you. Looks cool, doesn't it? The N-Gage's designers also thought so!). Anyways, you know you've got a problem when hundreds of people in your target demographic start up a website devoted to making fun of your product's ridiculous design, as is the case here. Enjoy.