Nokia N78 Cell Phone Review - Battery Life

Due to the use of AT&T's battery hungry 3G network both call time and web browsing time on the Nokia N78 were sub-par. Music playback time was good. For more information about our battery tests see this article.

Call Time (4.4)
The Nokia N78 lasted three hours forty minutes in our call time test. You can see below that this is significantly below average and the worst score amongst our comparison phones by a large margin. This is likely due to the N78's use of AT&T's power hungry 3G network. This poor talk time performance needs to be a concern to anyone who spends a lot of time on the phone. You can extend your battery life a bit by turning off 3G, but of course this means turning off one of the N78's major selling points.

Call Time (min)

Music Playback (7.0)
The N78 lasted nine hours forty-three minutes in our music playback test. This is slightly above average and compares will with most of our comparison phones, with the exception of the LG Dare, which had an astounding 16.5 hour music time. The N78's music performance means you'll be able to use it as your primary music device for several hours a day without worrying too much about killing the battery.

Music Playback Time (min)

Web Browsing (4.0)
The Nokia N78's web browsing time was three hours twenty minutes in our test. As with talk time this performance is significantly below average and the worst amongst our comparison phones. Once again we have to blame the power hungry 3G network in combination with a battery that just isn't up to the task. Heavy web browsers should be concerned about the N78's poor performance here.

Browsing Time (min)

Idle Time unscored
In order to ensure that we deliver reviews in a timely fashion we don't test idle time. Nokia's stated standbye time for the Nokia N78 is 13.3 days.