Nokia · 2003–2005 · ~2 million
Nokia’s attempt to fuse a mobile phone and a Game Boy rival into one "taco"-shaped device, undone by an awkward design, a $299 price, and the infamous "sidetalking" call posture.
Launched on 7 October 2003, the N-Gage aimed to lure players away from Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance by bundling gaming with phone calls, SMS, and MP3 playback in a single unit. The execution sabotaged the concept. To swap a game you had to remove the back cover and pop out the battery; the phone-oriented buttons were poorly suited to games; and because the speaker and microphone sat on the thin side edge, users had to hold the device sideways against their cheek to take a call — a posture instantly mocked as "sidetalking" and the whole unit derided as the "taco phone." At $299 it was expensive, and in its first US weeks the Game Boy Advance reportedly outsold it 100 to 1. Nokia revised the hardware with the sleeker N-Gage QD in 2004, but the damage was done.