Nokia N78
Shannon Rodricks
Symbian OS, Navi Wheel, Varied connectivity features, GPS, Good battery life,
Good music playback capabilities.
Poor build quality, GPS takes too long to position, Unexplained restarting of
the phone at times.
The Nokia N78 is the latest in the N-Series to grace our lab and it has
definitely created hype among those who love the N-Series phones. Boasting a
number of connectivity options - GPS and Nokia Maps, Series 60 version 3
feature pack 2 and the quality that we have come to expect of Nokia's premier
series - it is definitely set to impress.
Incidentally, it is only the third N-Series phone to boast of an inbuilt GPS
module and the first to have the Feature Pack 2, which promised a range of
improvements, so this was a phone that Nokia fans would definitely look out for.
Bundle
The phone comes with a pretty basic but functional bundle.
The bundle includes:
Nokia N78 handset, Charger, USB cable, Media remote and Headset, PC
connectivity software DVD and Manuals.
Build Quality and Design
At first look, the phone is highly reminiscent of the N81 albeit with a visible
keypad and few other changes. The exterior of the phone is plastic, which
brings down the looks of the phone considerably. The phone has a three-color
scheme with the front, sides and the back differentiated by different colors.
The front of the phone is glossy black with a few touches of silver, which
naturally attracts fingerprints. Unfortunately, the keypad picked up more
fingerprints than the screen itself. Also, since the screen is high gloss, the
legibility suffers in sunlight.
The keypad, apart from being a fingerprint magnet, has got another major flaw -
the design. There are four raised lines with each line encompassing three
numbers, devoid of separators between them. The keypad is essentially one
piece, except for the D-Pad and the Multimedia key, which causes more than a
few problems. Firstly, the call answer key also acts as the left soft key for
unlocking the phone. When you press the call answer key while the keypad is
locked, it displays a message saying, "Now press * ", which should only show up
if you press the left soft key.
The D-Pad offers four-way navigation and the center key acts as a selection
key. The sides of the D-Pad are touch sensitive and serve as a navi-wheel in
certain menus and applications. To the right of the D-Pad is the multimedia
menu shortcut key that brings up the Multimedia menu, Nokia's additional way to
browse your multimedia content, maps, special contacts and recent Maps.
Just above the screen, at the top right edge is the secondary VGA camera right
next to the light sensor.
To the left of the phone are the micro-USB port (left uncovered), microSD card
slot, charger connection and one of the loudspeakers. There's another
loudspeaker at the bottom left side of the phone and one at the top right side.
To the right of the phone are the volume control keys and the camera key. To
the top of the phone are the 3.5mm headphone port and the power key.
The bottom of the phone is bare except for a hole for the safety strap. At the
back of the phone is the camera lens with the accompanying flash.
On the whole I was not impressed with the design or the build quality of the
phone. The attraction to fingerprints is a serious turnoff, add to this the bad
design of the keypad and you get something that neither looks nice nor feels
nice.
There are also a lot of issues with the build of this phone. Firstly the
battery cover is very shaky. Secondly, there are a lot of gaps between the
joints, especially between the one-piece keypad and the main body. When the
phone is held with a little force it creaks, something that you wouldn't expect
in a phone in this price bracket.
Interface The phone operates using the Symbian Operating System S60 v3.2. The
workhorse is an ARM 11 369Mhz processor and its assisted by 96MB of RAM which
ensures that the phone is kept running even under sufficient load. This is the
first phone to pack in the FP2 for the Series 60 3rd edition and the changes
are quite noticeable.
Some of the few changes are below:
1. Multi-tasking
The multi-tasking feature has been highlighted. Apart from bringing down the
current running applications list by holding down the menu key, you can now
also access the list through the options menu in any application. The menu is
displayed not vertically dropping down from the top-left corner of the screen
but rather is setup horizontally at the bottom of the screen, displaying more
applications.
2. Middle Soft Key
In the previous versions, the middle key was relegated to just one function
(Selection/OK). Now this key too can be used as a soft key, and brings up a
variety of menus depending on the application.
3. Active Standby
Applications shortcuts on the standby menu can now be lined up vertically on
the left edge of the screen, besides the usual horizontal setup. When the
vertical setup is used and a shortcut is highlighted, options associated with
it are displayed on the right.
4. Menu
Navigation through the menus has become more visually appealing by switching
between menus being represented by a sliding off the former menu to one side of
the screen and then disappearing to make place for the latter. There are two
new menu display styles too, catered especially to those phones with a Navi
wheel. These are of the horseshoe style and the 'V' style.
5. Profile Switching
Feature Pack 2 supports automated switching of profiles depending on the time.
So no need to put your phone into silent mode every time you are in class or in
a meeting, it will do it automatically.
6.Themes
The themes application has also got a few additions with the ability to set
your own screensaver using the pictures in your gallery as a slideshow.
7. Caller Identification
Prior to this feature pack, you needed to install a third party application in
order to view a photo or picture for the current caller. This has been
incorporated into the OS itself now.
8. Audio Themes
For those who like the ability to set your own ring tone and message tone, you
are going to love this feature. It lets you set audio themes for different
types of events like call events, calendar events, messaging events, and alarm
clock. You can set up a number of themes and then activate the one you like. So
while the profile application handles the ring type, this application will
grant you better control over the tune played.
On the overall I didn't face any problem with the phones interface. The
processor ensured that the phone ran smoothly even under heavy load. What I did
face though was sudden unexplained restarts at times when I utilized my own
headphones with the 3.5mm jack.
Camera
The phone packs a 3.2 megapixel camera that can capture images at a maximum
resolution of 2048x1536. Since this is an N-Series phone, Nokia wasn't happy
just putting that so they added an autofocus capability, Carl Zeiss optics, and
a flash for late night shooting.
The final output from the camera gets mixed ratings. The pictures were a bit
noisy and blurred but the color reproduction was amazing.
Music Player
The music playback on this phone is definitely one of the better ones in the
N-Series. The 5 presets, the 8-band equalizer and the ability to define your
own presets are a definite treat. The quality of the player was good in most
cases but at times there was distortion of the higher frequencies.
There was no real problem with the interface. It was fast and navigation
through my long music library wasn't difficult due to the presence of the Navi
Wheel that performed admirably. For those of you who hate wires going all over
you in order to listen to music, there's good news. The phone has A2DP support
so you can stream your music directly to your Bluetooth headset.
The bundled headset was the standard headset that comes with all NSeries
phones. The 3.5mm jack lets you use your own head/earphones, which will give
you a better listening experience. The 8-band equalizer is a definite boon to
the music lover. There are 6 presets, which are fully customizable according to
the users liking.
FM Reception
The FM reception on this phone was a little above average. It was fast in
picking up the stations and reproduced sound perfectly. However, it missed out
on two stations, which had to be added to the presets manually.
Office Applications
The phone has the ability to read spreadsheets, documents, rich text files,
text file and powerpoint presentation files. Support for editing them though
will cost you a little extra. The phone also has the ability to open pdf and
zip files.
Connectivity
The N-Series is all about the connectivity. The N78 doesn't disappoint in this
regard. Apart from the standard Bluetooth and USB cable connectivity, it also
possesses WiFi, which improves on the productivity aspect of this phone. The
phone supports 3G, a network that is not yet available in our country but
shouldn't be long before it is here with all the hype surrounding the iPhone.
3G coming to India.
The phone comes with a built in html browser but for those bitten by the
OperaMini bug, you shouldn't have a problem installing the same.
GPS and Nokia Maps
The phone comes preloaded with very detailed Nokia Maps. Apart from that it
also offers you photo-tagging and adding your own placemarks. Pair this with
the A-GPS facility and the chances of you getting lost are miniscule. Sadly
though, the GPS facility of the phone that I was testing was not operational.
It failed to position me on the map no matter how long I stood in my garden
waiting.
Battery
The battery lasted a little over two days with about an hour's worth of
talktime, 3 hours of music playback and an hour of video playback. This phone
is meant for those who love to travel, as in people who require GPS to find
their way around. GPS (and also WiFi) is a major battery hog and they will cut
down the above value by about half. This means a day's worth of usage with
considerable usage of GPS and/or WiFi, which is pretty good.
Call quality
The N78 delivered excellent call quality. The audio quality is excellent and
the reception quality is good. While testing the phone in the train, I did
encounter a significant drop in quality but only in certain areas. But that was
more of a service provider problem than that of the phone.
Conclusion
The phone currently retails at Rs. 19,000. Consider that for this price you get
3G, the tried and tested Symbian series, a 3.2MP camera, GPS, WiFi, GPRS, an
above average camera and audio player, great battery life and excellent call
quality. Now compare it to the two other phones in the N-Series that
incorporate GPS - the N95 and the N82. Both have all the above features and
replace the 3.2MP camera with a 5MP camera. Now consider that the N82 has
dropped below the 20K mark and the N95 (not the 8GB variant) is around 21,000.
I would opt for the 5MP camera. Also, the new entrant, Nokia 6220c, which has
all the features of the N78 except for the WiFi, and upgrades the camera to 5MP
and the RAM to 128MB and also throws in a TV-out functionality. For those of
you who do not need WiFi that much, this phone will be a better option over the
N78 and that too for Rs.1,500 less.
Source: Text100
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