Nokia N78 Cell Phone Review - Imaging

The 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera takes very good photos, but not up to the standard of the Nokia's higher end N-Series phones like the N82. Similarlly video is good, but not quite up there with the best phones out there. Not surprising as the N78 falls in the middle of Nokia's smart phone lineup.

Resolution (4.08)
To test the resolution of the Nokia N78's 3.2 megapixel camera we take photos of an industry standard resolution chart and run the photos trough Imatest software. Imatest produces a score called line widths per picture height, which tells us how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together.

The Nokia N78's camera scored 958 lw/ph horizontal and 1049 lw/ph vertical. You can see below that this is above average, which we would expect, but falls short of the Nokia N82's five megapixel camera and the LG Dare's 3.2 megapixel camera. In fact the N78's performance in this test was virtually identical to the performance of its predecessor the N73, which also sported a 3.2 megapixel camera.

Cell Phone	Nokia N78	Apple iPhone 3G	Nokia N82
Score	4.08	3.33	7.59
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	958/1049	866/897	1307/1288
Image of Resolution Chart

Cell Phone	LG Dare	LG enV2	Samsung Blackjack II
Score	6.96	1.61	2.45
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1251/709	601/631	742/894
Image of Resolution Chart

Color (5.41)
To see the quality of color captured by the Nokia N78's camera we take photos of the industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart, which displays twenty-four different colors. We then use Imatest software to compare the captured colors to the original colors. Imatest produces the chart below, where you can see the difference between the actual and captured colors.

Imatest also produces a second chart, displayed below, which gives you a clearer picture of how accurate colors are. Here you see ideal colors indicated by a square and captured colors with a circle. The longer the line between the two the more innacurate the colors.

You can see that the Nokia N78 had some trouble reproducing greens and yellows, with those colors under saturated. Reds are slightly over saturated. Overall the error isn't terrible, and the whites were pretty accurate, which we like to see. You can see below that the N78's performance in this test was about the same as the N82, and beat out all of our other comparison phones except for the LG enV2. We were pretty happy with the N78's performance in this test, it's not the best, but it is significantly better than average.

Cell Phone	Nokia N78	Apple iPhone 3G	Nokia N82
Score	5.41	3.90	5.45
Color Checker Chart

Cell Phone	LG Dare	LG enV2	Samsung Blackjack II
Score	3.77	6.39	2.62
Color Checker Chart

Noise (0.38)
To test noise we take photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at four different lighting levels, ranging from 3000 lux (bright sunny day) to 60 lux (candlelight). We use Imatest to look at noise at each lighting level and consider overall noise and consistency across lighting levels. The Nokia N78 did not perform well in this test, posting one of the lowest noise scores we've seen, with poor noise at every lighting level spiking particularly high at the lowest. This means you're likely to see some grain in the photos produced by the N78's camera, especially as light goes down. No phone camera does well in this test due to the small sensors used, as you can see by looking at the scores below, but the N78's performance was particularly bad.

Noise

Live Preview (7.0)
The Nokia N78's live preview takes up the entire 2.4 inch display, which we like to see. Detail was as good as you would expect from a QVGA resolution display, and colors were accurate to the final capture photo. We detected a little bit of pixelation as you panned, but not enough to cause problems while taking photos and it cleared up after the stopped movement. The quality was better than the average phone, but not quite as good as phones with larger viewfinders and higher resolution like the iPhone 3G.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (4.65)
The Nokia N78 took 4.3 seconds to go from the home screen until we were able to capture a photo. You can see below that this is slightly below average, which is unsurprising given that the N78 has an auto-focus camera, so you have to take the additional time for the scene to come into focus before you can capture the photo. It's not as slow as the N82, however, but it is slower than the LG Dare, which also has an auto-focus lens but was one of the fastest phones to focuse we've ever seen. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Unlocked Standbey to First Shot (sec)

Shot to Shot Time (7.20)
Shot to shot time is a measure of how long it takes for a camera to take a series of photos. When possible we use the camera's burst mode for this test, which the Nokia N78 does. We were able to take six photos in 2.5 seconds using the burst mode, which works out to 2.4 frames per second (fps). This is an excellent score, you can see below that it's much faster than average and amongst our comparison phones only the LG Dare performed better. Even more impressive is that the photos captured in burst mode are full 3.2 megapixel images. Many phones only take lower resolution photos with their burst mode. The N78's performance in this test is particularly important for those who like to capture action shots like their kid's soccer game. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shot to Shot Time (fps)

Shutter to Shot Time (1.54)
Shutter to shot time is a measure of how long it takes the camera to actually capture a photo once you've pressed the shutter key. On the Nokia N78 this took 1.3 seconds, whic includes the time it takes to get the scene into focus. Once the scene is in focus it only takes 0.12 seconds, but of course you're going to want to use the auto-focus so we'll use the slower time for our score. You can see below that 1.3 seconds is significantly slower than average, but we are happy to see that it's faster than the other two auto-focus comparison phones the N82 and Dare.
For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shutter to Shot time (sec)

Interface (9.0)
The Nokia N78's camera interface is the same that we've seen on a plethor of Nokia's N-Series devices. The key feature of the interface is a strip of icons found on the left side of the interface and navigable with the D-Pad. These icons give you quick access to most camera functions including scene modes, flash, timer, sequence mode, color tone, viewfinder grid, white balance, exposure compensation, sharpness, brightness, contrast and ISO. You can see that almost any adjustment you want to make is close to hand all the while leaving the majority of the screen to act as a viewfinder. This is what we like to see and the reason we think the N-Series camera interface is amongst the best we've seen on a cell phone.

Photo Album Software Internal (7.5)
The Nokia N78 has the same Gallery software with its carousel of images that other N-Series devices do. Nokia, however, seems to have added an intermediary layer over the Gallery and renamed the application Photos. The original Gallery can still be found buried in the menus, but at the top level you are directed to the Photos application instead. The only difference between the two that we can see is this intermediary step when you launch the application that lists various options.

You can view only your captured photos, photos by month, album or tag, downloaded photos or all of them. You can also choose to share a photo from this menu. Although we appreciate the new sorting options, we've been asking for this for awhile, we're not sure that Nokia's implementation is very well done. It would have been better to see a more transparent implementation in the photo system, perhaps with shortcut keys to switch between different views. Aside from this the software is the same old Gallery with nice effects for viewing your photos, excellent editing options and the ability to view a slide show.

Manual Control (2.0)
The Nokia N78 offers you several different scene modes, including portrait, landscape, sports and night modes. You can also define your own scene mode with custom settings. This is nice flexibility and we're very happy to see it. What's not supported are more advanced manual controls like aperture priority or shutter priority, but these are often not found in standard point and shoot cameras so we're not surprised to see them left out here.

Zoom (1.0)
The Nokia N78 has a 20x digital zoom for which we only award a single point as all it does is crop and enlarge the scene you are viewing, with predictable negative impacts on the photo quality.

Focus (5.0)
The Nokia N78 has an auto-focus camera, which means that the phone will attempt to put the scene into focus before you take a photo. This produces better photos on average than the fixed focus camera that most phones ship with.

Flash (3.0)
The Nokia N78 has an LED flash that's good out to about three feet. We do wish that Nokia had gone with the more powerful Xenon flash as seen on the N82.

Metering (4.0)
The Nokia N78 offers, Exposure Compensation, Brightness and ISO controls. This is more control of the way the phone will handle lighting in a scene than most devices offer. There are no metering controls, however, which allow you to choose the specific point or points of the scene from which light will be judged.

White Balance (2.0)
The N78 has the typical presets for white balance, including sunny, cloudy, incandescent and fluorescent.

Image Handling (8.0)
Like all of Nokia's N-Series handsets the N78 offers you with excellent image handling options. You can rename photos, of course, but going into edit mode will also allow you to apply a variety of effects and adjustments to your photos. These include rotate, sharpness, red eye reduction, resizing, contrast, cropping and brightness as well as some other fun effects. We're very happy with the range of photo editing options on the N78.

Video Quality (7.0)
The video quality of the Nokia N78's camera is better than the average phone, but it did have some problems. In particular we noticed a lot of noise and video seemed soft with under-saturated colors. We also noted problems with lighting. That said we didn't see problems with artifacting or pixelation in movement or panning, and the quality is good enough to throw up on Youtube, and even looked decent when we went full screen on our laptop display. The N78 captured video at 640 x 480, which is the same as the N82 or N95, but only at 15 frames per second, which is half of those other two phones.

Video Resolution (13.34)
To test the resolution of video captured by the Nokia N78 we take video of the same industry standard resolution chart we use for our still resolution test. We then run frames from this video through Imatest software to produce a line widths per picture height score, which tells us how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned. The Nokia N78 performed well in this test, scoring 378 lw/ph horizontal and 353 lw/ph vertical. This is not as good as the N82, but is significantly better than average and amongst our comparison phones only the LG Dare came close to the N78's performance.

Video Compression (4.0)
The Nokia N78 captured video in Mpeg-4 for higher quality video but can also capture video specifically for multimedia messages in 3GP format.

Interface (8.0)
The video capture interface is much the same as the stills capture, with a strip of icons on the left side of the screen for access to various controls. The big difference is that there are many fewer controls for video than are available for still capture. At the bottom left is the time indicator with most of the display taken up by the viewfinder. As with the still video interface we found it clean and easy to use.

Manual Control (0.0)
There are no manual controls available for video capture on the N78.

Zoom (1.0)
There is a digital zoom for video capture on the N78. We only award a single point for digital zoom as all it does is crop and enlarge the scene. With the lower resolutions of video capture this means you quickly lose quality as you start to use it.

Editing (6.0)
The Nokia N78 offers you several video editing options including the ability to cut the video, merge it with another and add text. This is much more than most phones offer, which is usually no editing options.

Modes (4.0)
The Nokia N78 offers a specific mode to capture mobile video for multimedia messages. It also offers a night mode for low light situations.