The Rise and Fall of the Nokia N-Gage, the Taco Phone That Tried to Beat the Game Boy

In 2003 Nokia made four of every ten phones on Earth, looked at the Game Boy, and decided it could do better. The N-Gage was the result: a three hundred dollar "taco phone" you held sideways against your cheek to make a call, and had to remove the battery just to change a game. The Game Boy outsold it one hundred to one. But the idea underneath it, a phone that was also your games machine, was exactly right. Four years later the iPhone proved it, and Nokia's empire fell to the future it had seen first. Chapters: 0:00 The phone you held like a taco 00:45 When Nokia was the mobile phone 2:00 The visionary idea, the wrong attitude 3:10 "The Game Boy is for ten-year-olds" 4:00 Sidetalking and the battery-swap nightmare 5:30 The sales number that was not real 7:00 The QD fix that came too late 8:00 The iPhone does it right, and buries Nokia