While Nokia showed off the N-Gage at the Game Developer's Conference, the people at GameSpy got some hand-on time with the game deck. Four members of the GameSpy team took turns playing with the N-Gage and revealed their first impressions of the system, including how it stacks up agains the Game Boy Advance.

The reviewers leave a generally positive impression of the unit. They enjoyed the bright active matrix screen, light-weight form factor, and intuitive interface. Raymond Padilla noted, "It's shaped similarly to a Game Boy Advance but a bit slimmer -- think a GBA after six months of Weight Watchers."

The GameSpy team cited several qualms with the system. One particularly valid complaint was the poor placement of the MMC card slot, requiring the user to remove the batteries from the system to change games! Hopefully that will be fixed before the N-Gage launch in October. Other complaints included the vertical orientation of the screen and the awkwardness of the machine as a phone. As John "Warrior" Keefer wrote: "You look like you are holding a taco to your ear."