If there’s a holy grail for wireless telecom companies, it’s the successful combination of mobile phones with something, anything else — digital cameras, MP3 players, personal digital assistants, whatever. The idea has a kind of fait accompli quality to it, but attempts to date have failed to yield major successes, at least within the U.S. That may change though with Nokia’s N-Gage, a hybrid mobile phone and gaming system. This is probably the smartest convergent device yet, combining a Symbian OS-based phone, networkable gaming system, Bluetooth, MP3 player… the list goes on and the spec sheet is very impressive. The missing ingredient is the pricing, which has yet to be announced and will be determined by carriers and retailers. If they can bring this thing in under US$500, it’s a winner.