Nokia 5630 XpressMusic handset announced

We hate to kick the N-Gage platform when it’s down, but it’s really been struggling lately, which is something of a quandary since Nokia’s actually been giving it some much needed attention on the hardware front.

The Nokia 5320 XpressMusic scored a Silver Award recently in our hardware review, and even though there are plenty of other features that attracted the mobile hungry technophiles, there’s no denying the impressive specification will have put the N-Gage platform in a few extra pockets (if only they had some games to play).

Nokia’s about to follow this hardware success up with a similar, higher-end device, the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic. As you can obviously tell from the name, it also comes with the XpressMusic system and, even though it’s just as well hidden as it was with the previous model, there’s full N-Gage support built in. At only 12mm thick, this is the thinnest, lightest and undeniably sexiest N-Gage handset yet.

It’s presumably no coincidence that Nokia is (finally) beginning to marshall its strengths. These new XpressMusic devices are pulling in both the music loving user and the pocket gamer, and with titles like Dance Fabulous on the horizon - which allows you to play a music rhythm game using the tracks stored on your phone - there’s a definite pattern emerging.

After all, the iPhone is very much a glorified iPod, and it seems Nokia has suddenly realised that it has a catalogue of discrete systems at its behest that could be coupled to provide a similar platform to the Apple handset.

Not that these XpressMusic devices are in direct competition with the iPhone, but for those who like the idea of a powerful mobile games system, a well connected handset and a pocket full of music mounted on a more traditional mobile phone, Nokia might well have discovered the answer.

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic is expected in around mid-2009, with a rough price tag of €199.