Log in

View Full Version : MWC: At last a (somewhat) gaming-friendly Windows Mobile phone!


Menneisyys
02-19-2009, 02:21 AM
I’ve long been mourning on the lack of a Windows Mobile phone with a decent D-pad for gaming and running emulators. Windows Mobile devices with a, for gaming, usable directional pad are far and between. (Actually, the last Windows Mobile device to have a decent gaming controller was the Asus A620 five and half a year ago…)

Fortunately, Chinese manufacturer (currently, only selling their stuff to the Chinese market) TechFaith has come out with a gaming-friendly (but, in other ways, pretty underpowered) model, the G3000. (Actually, they even advertise it as a gaming-friendly handset.)

Unfortunately, while it does have a gaming-friendly D-pad and buttons on the other side of the bezel (and even some buttons at the top), the phone, feature-wise, isn’t anything to write home about:
* As far as gaming is concerned, it doesn’t have 3D acceleration. Now that Gameloft has a working version of their game on the Toshiba TG01 (see my latest report HERE (http://www.smartphonemag.com/cms/blog/9/were-first-publish-mwc-new-hi-res-videos-gameloft’s-forthcoming-3d-accelerated-prince-persia-)), the importance of 3G acceleration has become even bigger.
* As far as the phone / Internet access part is concerned, it has no 3G support at all. Yes, it’s GPRS/EDGE only.
* The CPU is also a pretty old and underpowered one – read: don’t even think of the 1GHz Snapdragon, the one the TG01 will come with…
* It’s only sold in China; the TechFaith guys, however, stated they are looking into distributing it in Europe / the States too.

There are no plans of releasing an updated (read: 3G, much faster CPU, 3D acceleration) version right now. The folks at the TechFaith booth stated “if and only if there will be considerable demand / feedback”. Bad news, I’d say, given that this could become THE real and only choice for serious Windows Mobile gaming, the other phones either missing the D-pad completely or only having a bad and non-gaming-friendly one.

(Note that PDAdb.net seems to have messed up the G3000 entry (http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=specs&id=1632): they have taken the photo of another phone Pebble (http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=specs&id=1633) for the G3000 and vica versa. That is, it’s with the Pebble record that the photo of the G3000 is displayed.)

Some pictures of the device I’ve taken at MWC (click the links for a much bigger picture!):

http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/TH/IMG_9352.JPG (http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/IMG_9352.JPG)
http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/TH/IMG_9356.JPG (http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/IMG_9356.JPG)
http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/TH/IMG_9357.JPG (http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/IMG_9357.JPG)
http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/TH/IMG_9359.JPG (http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/IMG_9359.JPG)
http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/TH/IMG_9360.JPG (http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/IMG_9360.JPG)
http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/TH/IMG_9361.JPG (http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/IMG_9361.JPG)
http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/TH/IMG_9364.JPG (http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/IMG_9364.JPG)

Some other shots of the booth / other devices (nothing particular or special – that is, don’t except anything like the Toshi TG01):

http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/TH/IMG_9349.JPG (http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/IMG_9349.JPG)
http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/TH/IMG_9351.JPG (http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/IMG_9351.JPG)
http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/TH/IMG_9353.JPG (http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/IMG_9353.JPG)
http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/TH/IMG_9354.JPG (http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/IMG_9354.JPG)
http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/TH/IMG_9355.JPG (http://www.winmobiletech.com/022009MWC/IMG_9355.JPG)