Nokia N78 Fun Phone

Nokia Edition N78 Specifications & Features

The N78 tears me in two. On the one hand, it does everything. It's packed from the bottom of its shiny black chassis to the top of its gorgeous screen with features like HSDPA, FM Transmitter, GPS and a really solid 3.2 megapixel camera. It even looks the goods - the shiny black is as fingerprint-worthy as the iPhone in every sense. But when it comes to actually came to using the N78 - well, in a nutshell I hated it. The controls felt more awkward than my high school formal - the three raised ridges that replaced the traditional numeric buttons were like pressing against the back of a knife, which may suit some people, but did nothing for me. The buttons themselves were fairly responsive, although there were several times the cancel button took an age to actually take me back to the home screen. And the select button, stuck inside a smaller-than-usual 4-way navigation button - almost always scrolled down one place in a list before selecting. I don't have the fattest thumbs on earth either - I ended up countering this (seriously) by navigating to the option above the one I wanted before trying to select it.

Screen: 2.4 Inch QVGA TFT 16 Million Colour Screen (240 x 320 Pixels)

Imaging : 3.2 Megapixel Camera, Carl Zeiss™ Optics, Tessar™ Lens, Auto Focus, Auto Exposure, 20 x Digital Zoom, LED Flash, Photo Editor, Photo Blogging, Photo Settings (User, Close Up, Landscape, Night & Night Portrait), Colour Tone (Normal, Black & White, Sepia & Negative), White Balance (Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Incandescent & Fluorescent), Video Recorder, Video 8 x Digital Zoom, RealPlayer (MPEG4,H264, H263, RealVideo & Flash 3), Video Streaming, Video Stabiliser, Video Editor, Video Calling, Second Camera, Wallpapers & Screensavers

Messaging : SMS (Text Messaging), MMS (Multimedia Messaging), Email, Email Attachments (SMTP, IMAP4 & POP3), Instant Messaging

Sound : Music Player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ & WMA), Playlists, Album Art, Equalizer, Stereo FM Radio, VisualRadio™, Nokia edition Music Manager, MP3 & Polyphonic Ringtones, Stereo Speakers, Stereo Headset

Entertainment : Java™ Games, Embedded Games, Downloadable Games, Organiser, Contacts, Calendar, To Do List, Notes, Recorder, Calculator, Clock, Printing, Speed Dial, Voice Dial, Office Document Viewers, Assisted GPS System, Nokia Maps, Symbian Operating System, S60 3rd Edition Software

Connectivity : 3G, HSDPA, Bluetooth® with A2DPv USB 2.0, EDGEv WLAN Wi-Fi with UPnP

Network : Quad Band (GSM 800, GSM 900, GSM 1800 & GSM 1900), WCDMA

Internet : Nokia Browser with Mini Map, RSS Feeds

Memory & Talk Time : 70 Mbytes Memory Plus MicroSD™ Memory Card Support, 4 Hours Talk Time, 320 Hours Standby

Weight & Size : 101.8 g, 113 x 49 x 15.1 mm

Looking past the control issues, the N78 is actually a really impressive handset - it's loaded with pretty much everything you need. Battery life is decent, even with Wi-Fi on, and the GPS chip lets you not only navigate using Nokia Maps, but also geotags your photos. As standard with Nokia Maps, voice navigation is an optional extra, which isn't really worth the cash. The lonely looking button to the right of the D-pad is the multimedia shortcut button, which worked quite well. Sound quality from the N78 is on par with an iPod, although the system for synchronising music isn't up to the same standard as iTunes. In fact, because I use a Mac, I was forced to go and manually search for an iSync plugin to get my information onto the phone. This wasn't very well explained in any of the documentation that accompanied the phone either, mind you. The FM transmitter worked, although like most FM transmitter's I've used, is still frequently subjected to interference. The GPS didn't take too long to connect to the satellites, but it wasn't the fastest I've used either. On the whole, I did enjoy using the N78 - there's a blend of simplicity and functionality in Nokia phones that's hard not to like. But those controls were terrible - I've decided that phones either need proper keys or a touchscreen, not some in between sort-of solution that feels awkward.

The N78 tears me in two. On the one hand, it does everything. It's packed from the bottom of its shiny black chassis to the top of its gorgeous screen with features like HSDPA, FM Transmitter, GPS and a really solid 3.2 megapixel camera. It even looks the goods - the shiny black is as fingerprint-worthy as the iPhone in every sense. But when it comes to actually came to using the N78 - well, in a nutshell I hated it. The controls felt more awkward than my high school formal - the three raised ridges that replaced the traditional numeric buttons were like pressing against the back of a knife, which may suit some people, but did nothing for me. The buttons themselves were fairly responsive, although there were several times the cancel button took an age to actually take me back to the home screen. And the select button, stuck inside a smaller-than-usual 4-way navigation button - almost always scrolled down one place in a list before selecting. I don't have the fattest thumbs on earth either - I ended up countering this (seriously) by navigating to the option above the one I wanted before trying to select it.

Looking past the control issues, the N78 is actually a really impressive handset - it's loaded with pretty much everything you need. Battery life is decent, even with Wi-Fi on, and the GPS chip lets you not only navigate using Nokia Maps, but also geotags your photos. As standard with Nokia Maps, voice navigation is an optional extra, which isn't really worth the cash. The lonely looking button to the right of the D-pad is the multimedia shortcut button, which worked quite well. Sound quality from the N78 is on par with an iPod, although the system for synchronising music isn't up to the same standard as iTunes. In fact, because I use a Mac, I was forced to go and manually search for an iSync plugin to get my information onto the phone. This wasn't very well explained in any of the documentation that accompanied the phone either, mind you. The FM transmitter worked, although like most FM transmitter's I've used, is still frequently subjected to interference. The GPS didn't take too long to connect to the satellites, but it wasn't the fastest I've used either. On the whole, I did enjoy using the N78 - there's a blend of simplicity and functionality in Nokia phones that's hard not to like. But those controls were terrible - I've decided that phones either need proper keys or a touchscreen, not some in between sort-of solution that feels awkward.

The N78 tears me in two. On the one hand, it does everything. It's packed from the bottom of its shiny black chassis to the top of its gorgeous screen with features like HSDPA, FM Transmitter, GPS and a really solid 3.2 megapixel camera. It even looks the goods - the shiny black is as fingerprint-worthy as the iPhone in every sense.

But when it comes to actually came to using the N78 - well, in a nutshell I hated it. The controls felt more awkward than my high school formal - the three raised ridges that replaced the traditional numeric buttons were like pressing against the back of a knife, which may suit some people, but did nothing for me.

The buttons themselves were fairly responsive, although there were several times the cancel button took an age to actually take me back to the home screen. And the select button, stuck inside a smaller-than-usual 4-way navigation button - almost always scrolled down one place in a list before selecting. I don't have the fattest thumbs on earth either - I ended up countering this (seriously) by navigating to the option above the one I wanted before trying to select it.

Looking past the control issues, the N78 is actually a really impressive handset - it's loaded with pretty much everything you need. Battery life is decent, even with Wi-Fi on, and the GPS chip lets you not only navigate using Nokia Maps, but also geotags your photos. As standard with Nokia Maps, voice navigation is an optional extra, which isn't really worth the cash.

The lonely looking button to the right of the D-pad is the multimedia shortcut button, which worked quite well. Sound quality from the N78 is on par with an iPod, although the system for synchronising music isn't up to the same standard as iTunes. In fact, because I use a Mac, I was forced to go and manually search for an iSync plugin to get my information onto the phone. This wasn't very well explained in any of the documentation that accompanied the phone either, mind you.

The FM transmitter worked, although like most FM transmitter's I've used, is still frequently subjected to interference. The GPS didn't take too long to connect to the satellites, but it wasn't the fastest I've used either.

On the whole, I did enjoy using the N78 - there's a blend of simplicity and functionality in Nokia phones that's hard not to like. But those controls were terrible - I've decided that phones either need proper keys or a touchscreen, not some in between sort-of solution that feels awkward.