At first blush, Nokia has suceeded in makng the N-Gage look more like a handheld game console than a phone.

It looks more like a mobile game deck like Gameboy Advance. The size - 133mm wide by 70mm high by 20mm deep - is reasonable for a deck, but not for a phone. The weight is fine though, just 135 grams. On the left is a directional key just above three shortcut keys, and on the right are the twelve touch-dial phone keys. Keys five and seven are highlighted, because they are the main game keys.

Nokia has also innovated for the screen. Unlike other game decks, the display is not in landscape mode but in portrait mode. The screen has a resolution of 176x208 pixels and an active surface area of 35x41.5mm. The N-Gage displays 4096 colors simultaneously, so the Gameboy Advance is well ahead here with 32,768. The display is great: the image is detailed and the contrast is barely affected by the backlighting.

Nokia did not go overboard on peripheral ports. There are two jack inputs for the on-the-move headset, or for headphones and microphone plugged in separately, and a 1.1-compatible USB input.