The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, S60 5th Edition, and the Future of N-Gage
Published by Tzer2 at 18:43 GMT, January 16th 2009
Lots of change in the air: Nokia has just launched their first touchscreen S60 phone, the 5800 XpressMusic, and with it they've also launched Symbian S60 5th Edition. What do these developments mean for the N-Gage platform?
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, S60 5th Edition, and the Future of N-Gage
The new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic smartphone is gradually becoming available throughout the world, and marks the first time Nokia has made a touchscreen-based phone using the popular Symbian S60 operating system. S60 is used by the new N-Gage platform, so in theory any new phone with S60 can also be N-Gage-compatible (though in real life it's not quite that simple). Nokia has also said that it will bring N-Gage to touchscreen phones in 2009, and that's why All About N-Gage is taking an in-depth look at the 5800 and the S60 5th Edition interface.
If you're just interested in the 5800 as a general device, be sure to read our sister site All About Symbian's in-depth multi-part feature on the phone's hardware and software.
The Nokia 5800 is in the middle, with the N95 8GB on the left and the N78 on the right
Disclaimer: We don't know if the 5800 will ever be N-Gage compatible!
It should be made clear that Nokia has never made any official announcements or press releases about the 5800 being N-Gage compatible. It's possible that the phone will never be compatible with N-Gage. Some Nokia representatives at various events did informally talk about N-Gage for the 5800 being "in the pipeline", but informal statements aren't a guarantee of anything.
So, don't buy the 5800 thinking it will be N-Gage compatible, because no one knows if it will be yet. It's even possible that Nokia simply haven't decided yet.
With that in mind, let's get on with the article...
On the left is the S60 5th Edition menu screen, and on the right is the standby screen (with quick links to four contacts)
The 5800 uses the latest version of the S60 web browser, which is based on the open source WebKit browser engine. WebKit is also used by Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome.
The S60 browser can display Flash-based sites such as homestarrunner.com, and can also play Flash video.
Text can be entered with a finger-friendly on-screen keyboard. Alternatively you can use a smaller stylus keyboard, handwriting recognition, or a virtual numeric keypad with predictive text.
Introducing S60 5th Edition
The current range of N-Gage-compatible phones run an operating system called Symbian S60 3rd Edition (the original gen N-Gage and QD ran S60 1st Edition). The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is the first device to use the new version of the OS, S60 5th Edition. In case you're wondering, there's no 4th Edition due to the number four having negative connotations in various parts of Asia.
So far two S60 5th Edition devices have been announced, the 5800 and the upcoming Nokia N97. The N97 has been confirmed as N-Gage-compatible, but (as mentioned above) Nokia haven't said anything officially about N-Gage on the 5800. Other manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson and Samsung will probably make S60 5th Edition phones too, but they haven't announced them yet.
Both the 5800 and N97 are based around 640x360 resolution touchscreens, though the N97 is physically slightly bigger and has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
At first glance S60 5th Edition looks somewhat similar to S60 3rd Edition, but the touchscreen makes it much quicker and easier to use. For example, touching the phone's clock takes you straight to the clock application, touching the phone profile name takes you straight to the profile selection screen, and things like browsing the web are much easier when you can click on links directly. The look and feel has been greatly improved too, with clearer visual cues and nice large on-screen buttons. The interface can be used entirely with your fingers, though you can use a stylus if you want to, and the 5800 is small enough to be used with one hand.
Texting works without physical buttons through a choice of four on-screen methods: a finger-friendly full-size horizontal QWERTY keyboard, a stylus-friendly vertical QWERTY keyboard, an on-screen keypad with predictive text, or a handwriting recognition system.
As it's brand new, there aren't many apps or games available for S60 5th Edition, but they should start appearing throughout 2009. In theory S60 5th Edition is also backwards compatible with S60 3rd Edition apps and games, though in practice it's difficult to predict which apps will work. There's also Java and Flash Lite support, though as with S60 it will take time for software to appear.
Just in case you're worried about accidentally touching the phone in your pocket, there's a screen lock button on the side of the 5800, and it has a proximity sensor to deactivate the screen while you're holding it to your face during a phone call.
Bounce Touch running on the 5800 through its TV Out feature
Gaming on the 5800
But that's enough of the technical stuff, let's get down to gaming. There are only two games included with the retail version 5800, a special version of Bounce Boing Voyage called "Bounce Touch", and Global Racer Raging Thunder.
Global Racer Raging Thunder is the same game that's been available on various S60 phones, though for some reason it's had all the in-game ramps removed. The interesting things to notice are the two new touch-based controls, which both allow you to steer the car in an analogue manner. The default method has you tilting the phone, and thanks to the 5800's built-in accelerometer the car moves according to which direction you tilt and how far you tilt. An alternative method is using the stylus, which displays a spider-like graph around the car that lets you drag the car in the right direction as well as controlling its speed. The tilt sensor sounds more intuitive, but when you actually play the game the stylus works much more precisely.
Bounce Touch is a cut-down version of the N-Gage platform's Bounce: Boing Voyage, and features some of the same 3D platform levels. The control method is entirely stylus based, but it's been implemented much more clumsily than in Global Racer, with the whole game being very difficult to control. The original button-based N-Gage Bounce was excellent and recently received an AAN Recommended award, but the 5800 version is practically unplayable.
More worryingly though, both games suffer from something else: very jerky 3D graphics, much jerkier than on current N-Gage phones.
The problem is possibly to do with the 5800's much higher screen resolution, it has more than twice the pixels of existing N-Gage phones. When 3D games have higher resolutions they look much more detailed, but they also become more jerky as more detailed 3D graphics require more processing power. That's why 3D games tend to slow down as you increase their resolution, and also why PC games often have the option of shrinking a game's screen size. What the jerkiness of Global Racer and Bounce means for gaming on the 5800 is unclear, as it could be that games actually written for S60 5th Edition will run more smoothly (Global Racer and Bounce were written for S60 3rd Edition), but it could also be that the 5800 just doesn't have enough processing power to cope with 3D games running at its full 360x640 resolution.
However, 2D games should run absolutely fine on the 5800. It's a very fast phone in other ways, it has instant response on its menus and excellent multimedia capabilities (including really good video playback). Something like Reset Generation would probably play absolutely flawlessly on the device.
Bounce Touch on the Nokia 5800
If the 5800 can't cope with 3D games...
As mentioned above, Bounce and Global Racer may not be the fairest tests of the 5800's abilities as they were written for other devices running an older version of the Symbian OS. It could be that 3D games written from the ground up for S60 5th Edition will run more smoothly on the 5800. If they run as smoothly as games on current N-Gage devices, then N-Gage should be able to come to the 5800.
However, if it turns out that 3D games just aren't feasible on the 5800, then it's doubtful that Nokia will bother bringing the platform to the phone.
Global Racer Raging Thunder on the Nokia 5800
N-Gage on the N97 and Beyond
Nokia has said that N-Gage will be on the upcoming Nokia N97, but the N97 will apparently have a faster processor and possibly graphics hardware too. That means 3D games could be much smoother on the N97 than the 5800, and that would explain why Nokia has announced N-Gage for the N97 but not the 5800.
The irony though is that the 5800 is easily fast enough for its other functions such as multimedia an internet. The only thing that suffers is 3D gaming, which is much jerkier than on older phones. Given this situation, perhaps it might make sense for Nokia to release a new version of the 5800 which includes graphics acceleration hardware and/or a faster processor? The N97 is such a phone to some extent, but it will be much more expensive and physically larger due to its built-in keyboard, so it's unlikely to sell as well as the 5800.
Pretty much everything else about the 5800 works well, and it's selling in large numbers in the countries where it's been released. It would be a real shame if the N-Gage platform missed out on all those potential users.
The upcoming Nokia N97, which has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard
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Categories: Comment, Software, Hardware
Platforms: N-Gage
Feature Discussion
Do NOT expect the 5800 to get N-Gage, because there has been NO official statement that it will get N-Gage.
Thank you. :-)
The N97 is different though, Nokia has officially announced that as N-Gage compatible on several occasions, including press releases, so that's almost certain to get N-Gage.
Regarding alterations for adding hardware support, the current pool of games would have to be worked upon anyway if they're going to work on a touchscreen device with a 640x360 resolution. The only way to avoid alteration would be to put them in a small on-screen box, or scale them up somehow (but that might look quite pixelly and would leave blank bars at the side).
| Sandy, as far as I could tell there was uncertainty about whether the N97 would have graphics hardware or not. We'll soon find out for sure though. |
Regarding the current pool of N-Gage games, we don't actually know on how they perform on higher resolution screens, as Nokia has by far released it for QVGA devices only. If the games are multi-screen (i.e., they stretch according to the screen size), then I doubt there will be further development on them. If they run using a part of the screen, probably some work will be definitely done then.
IIRC, at Nokia World, I was told same family as the N95, but faster clock speed.
In other words nothing absolute certain yet!
| Regarding the current pool of N-Gage games, we don't actually know on how they perform on higher resolution screens, |
Playing the two versions side by side, the 5800 version is much jerkier as one would expect from having a 3D game with almost four times the resolution.
| Having played extensively both Bounce Boing Voyage for N-Gage on a N82 and Bounce Touch on a 5800 XM, I can say that, at least for this game, there's really no difference in responsiveness despite the big difference in screen resolution |
While writing the article I played Bounce N-Gage on the N95, 5320, and 5800 side by side. It was pretty smooth on the N95 and 5320, but the 5800 version was much jerkier. The difference was very clear, even when just looking around the game environment and not moving.
The 5800 has the same processor as the 5320, and a similar amount of free RAM, the only real difference (apart from OS version) is that the 5800 has to cope with a 640x360 screen instead of 320x240.
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We do know how one game performs. Bounce Touch on the 5800 is basically just Bounce Boing Voyage from N-Gage with fewer levels. Playing the two versions side by side, the 5800 version is much jerkier as one would expect from having a 3D game with almost four times the resolution. |
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Originally Posted by Tzer2
I think there must be something wrong with your N82. :-) Were you running multiple apps while playing Bounce on the N82?
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| They just used the existing game (albeit by making it runnable on S60) |
You're absolutely right that we should wait to see how games written specifically for S60 5th Edition perform, and I did mention this in the text of the article. Maybe stuff actually written for the 5800 will perform much better than games ported from older S60 3rd Edition devices.
However, at the moment the most likely explanation for the jerkiness does still seem to be a massive increase in resolution (almost four times the size) without any increase in processing power.
| No. The only difference that I can think of is that I always install my N-Gage games in the microSD card, while Bounce Touch came installed in the phone main memory. |
Either way, have you tried running the games side by side?
BTW jerkiness is a very subjective thing. For example I think the game Midnight Pool isn't jerky at all, but my colleague Steve insists that it's very jerky, so there's obviously a lot of room for personal taste in these matters. :-)
| Well, N-Gage games are already S60 games really. Or did you mean "runnable on S60 5th Edition"? |
And yeah, if you have to make any S60v3 game runnable on S60v5, you have to do some work on it, which, the developers don't seem to have done here.
Regarding jerkiness, did you think that Asphalt 3 was really jerky. It lacked the feeling of speed (after-all it's meant to be a furious racer), neither was it's graphics top-notch.
that the screen work with single toutch not multi toutch
so no on screen keypad , have 3 buttons on there ,nokia 97 have full buttons on it
so that is the reason
|
Originally Posted by Tzer2
Either way, have you tried running the games side by side?
BTW jerkiness is a very subjective thing. For example I think the game Midnight Pool isn't jerky at all, but my colleague Steve insists that it's very jerky, so there's obviously a lot of room for personal taste in these matters. :-) |
Regarding optimization: either they've not optimized the game for either platform, or they did for both. In the N-Gage version you can only move forward and back, while on the 5800 XM you can also move sideways. The more limited are your movements, the more you can optimize graphics. Also, Bounce Touch is not just like Boing Voyage with fewer levels. It has quite a few different levels. Levels in Boing Voyage which require precise timing in jumping would have been much more difficult in Touch, and were removed; and conversely, levels requiring strafing while running (in particular, the one before the last) would have been near impossible to play with the N-Gage version. The fact that they took time to design new levels for this version leads me to believe that they also spent some time to optimize both games for their respective platforms.
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the reason that make the nokia 5800 no ngage compatible that the screen work with single toutch not multi toutch |
The Nintendo DS has the best touchscreen games ever made, but it doesn't have multitouch.
You really don't need multitouch to do good touch-based games.
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so no on screen keypad , have 3 buttons on there ,nokia 97 have full buttons on it so that is the reason |
Current N-Gage games use the d-pad and only needs players to press one button at a time. There is no N-Gage game which requires multiple simultaneous button presses.
The 5800 has the accelerometer to substitute for the d-pad, four buttons (red, green, white, multimedia) and on-screen buttons too. That's more than enough controls for current games.
| I've now run the games side-by-side, and I noticed a little jerkiness. But it's not something that jumps at you when you play the game, or that affects playability. As you say, it's a matter of personal taste, but IMHO you're making a mountain out of a molehill. |
If most people think the graphics are too jerky then they're too jerky. If most people think they're okay, then they're okay.
We'll see what happens in the future.
| Regarding jerkiness, did you think that Asphalt 3 was really jerky. It lacked the feeling of speed (after-all it's meant to be a furious racer), neither was it's graphics top-notch. |
System Rush Evolution and Bounce were written for N-Gage, and they were a LOT smoother than Asphalt 3.
| Technically, they can't be run by S60, that's why the need of the application interface. |
| And yeah, if you have to make any S60v3 game runnable on S60v5, you have to do some work on it, which, the developers don't seem to have done here. |
Even so, hugely increasing the screen resolution without increasing the processing power is a recipe for disaster when it comes to 3D graphics. Even the N97 seems to just have the processing power of the N95, which is a two year old phone now.
I'm NOT one of those people who wants the latest gadgets to have the latest hardware, but I do think they need to consider upgrading the processor and/or adding a graphics chip if they're serious about doing 3D games on S60 5th Edition phones.
The original gen N-Gage had a 176x208 screen with a 100mhz processor. S60 3rd Edition/Next Gen N-Gage has a 240x320 screen with a 369 mhz processor. Surely if they're going to go up to 360x640 they ought to upgrade the processor again, so that it can keep up? (Just for reference, 360x640 is a higher resolution than the PlayStation Portable, and the PSP relies heavily on graphics hardware for 3D games.)
Greater screen resolution doesn't just affect 3d graphics, it affects 2d in the same way (a greater number of pixels to render and copy to the framebuffer). With this CPU/resolution factor, it's quite likely that just blitting to the framebuffer is a large part of the cost of running the games. Given just the amount of data that needs to be pushed every frame, just blitting probably limits the theoretical top performance at a pretty low number.
There are no specific tweaks for the 5th edition that you could use to increase the performance of these games to a significant degree. There are no magic new API:s that you can call to get things running faster.
N-Gage games do not run in any sort of emulation, that the format of the game file is not an exe doesn't matter.
| Greater screen resolution doesn't just affect 3d graphics, it affects 2d in the same way |
A computer can do smooth 2D graphics without being able to do smooth 3D graphics.
| Lots of unfounded speculations about this and that here... |
you cant possibly want to save a few $$$$ and cripple your high end handset for another year......
you did this to the n96 already and n85, and whatever phones that came out in 2008.