Sales and reviews of Nokia's smartphone for gamers, N-Gage, have been lukewarm at best. With that in mind, rumors about a sequel to the mobile device have been circulating for months now.

Well it appears that there is a good chance that the mobile giant will attempt to engage more users with the unveiling of N-Gage 2 on April 14th, as a preview to E3, one the largest trade shows devoted to electronics and games in the United States, in May.

According to reports, members of the press in London will be able to check out the new smartphone. It appears Nokia is looking to get a jump on what should be the handset's official announcement at E3. To quote Nokia's invite to the event, those attending will "be one of the first to see into the revolutionary future of 21st century mobile gaming." While we don't expect Nokia to reinvent the wheel, we do expect the company to have learned quite a bit form the negative feedback the original N-Gage received.

Supposedly, the N-Gage 2 will, like the current model, run on Nokia's Series 60 interface on top of the Symbian operating system. The bulk of the changes should be in the hardware, where the original N-Gage suffered most, especially in comparison to TapWave's Palm OS-based gaming handheld, which is far superior to N-Gage in almost every way, expept you can't make phone calls like with Nokia's device. And even it that area the original N-Gage is said to suffer.

Improvements rumored to be included in N-Gage 2 are better memory/game card support, so users won't have to remove the battery to change games like in current model, which is a real drag, and the ability use the device as a mobile phone with it pressed flat against the side of your head, rather than having the meat, lettuce and tomato side of the current model's taco shape awkwardly held in the same spot. The new device may also be thinner than the current model.

We'll report more details, such as pricing and shipping information, when they become available.