NGage games on Nokia phones

I've just inherited my wife's Nokia N95 8GB as she got a free upgrade to the new Nokia 5800 touch phone (which is very nice).

So I thought I would see what software was available for the N95 and Symbian OS. I quite like the Symbian 3 OS on this phone. It's responsive to use and loads most pages and applications pretty quickly, plus after a bit of fiddling it becomes easy to use. Much more like a full OS on the phone than most other phone OSs. I've read that some newer Samsung phones are now using it, and I'm now wondering if the new Samsung Jet is using a customised variant of Symbian 5.

And as this is the N95 8GB version it has lots of room crying out for some games. ;)

After a bit of searching I discovered it is fairly easy to software hack Symbian 3 phones by first installing a newer version of the NGage app, then something called the TRK app which you launch from the phone to form a connected to your PC via USB when you wish to install some new games or applications, and finally a program called Secman. This runs on the phone and lets you install a root certificate onto the phone so you can the install unsigned applications. This is very important as normally when you download an app/game they are signed to your phone and locked to it. This only needs to be run once (I think).

I've so far done all this and successfully installed 3 N-Gage games on the phone and they work very nicely. Much nicer than Java phone games.

If anyone has a Nokia Sumbian 3 based phone and wants to know more please let me know and I can supply you with the files needed. I had some trouble with the first set of files I downloaded as the Secman.exe program refused to run under Vista 64bit, but I eventually found an alternative version of the program and that works perfectly. Now to explore all the N-Gage games. ;)

I've also spotted some emulators available! NES one downloading at the moment. :)

And have a look at

http://www.dotsis.com/mobile_phone/s...d.php?t=175087

For a complete run down of all emulators available for Symbian S60 mobiles.

They have already quite many emulators available, I'm curious to know if they run the games fine, meaning at a decent speed.

I've not yet tried any emulators, but I will do very soon.

So far I've hacked the N95 so if can install and run unsigned applications, as mentioned above. Installed the newer version of the NGage application and have so far installed 11 NGage games games on it and they all work perfectly. I found a game torrent with them all in and they are packaged with a Windows exe installer. You just connect your phone to the PC via USB. Launch the TRK app on the phone and then run the game installer on the PC. It copies the game over, then the phone takes over and you follow the on screen instructions on the phone to complete the install. Very easy.

Other NGage games come in a package with a .Blz extension. Supposedly these are nearly as easy to install. Copy the .Blz game file to the phone in the root of the E: drive, then run an app on the phone called blz installer which will find the .Blz files and let you install the games. However I've currently not been able to get any version of blzinstaller to install on my N95. All throw up a not compatible error, which is annoying. So I'm still searching for this program.

Installing any other stuff on the N95 is fairly straight forward. I've installed a File Manager called FExplorer which lets you manage the whole file structure on the phone just like you would in any other OS. Good for moving files around when they need to be in a specific location to install.

Installing most files to easy. They comes as .sis or .sisx files and you just load the PC suite application installer on the PC (comes as part of the phone's software). Point it to the file and it copies it to the phone and installs it. Sometimes the phone complains that it is unsigned and won't install it, but there is RootSign utility you can run any troublesome application installer through and it fixes them so they then install correctly. Great stuff.

:)

And installing Java games is very easy too. Easier than any other phone I've used. With the FExplorer File manager installed on the phone you just copy the .jar files you wish to install to anywhere on the E: drive of the phone, then select them in FExplorer. It asks it you want to install it, then does the rest. Nice!

I think I might go and try out the NES and SNES emulators now and see how they run.