Nokia N78 Cell Phone Review - Multimedia

The music software on the N78 is excellent, with one major drawback: it's incredibly slow to load. The video playback software is just a mess, with no fewere than three different programs for getting to your videos. Plus some can play certain videos and others cannot.

Accessing Music Software (3.23)
It took us 6.2 seconds to get a song playing on the Nokia N78. This is not a particularly impressive time, you can see below that it's below average and amongst our comparison phones only the N82 performed worse in this test.

We were slowed down by the fact that there's no shortcut to the music software on the home screen, so we had to go two levels deep into the menus to get the software running. Once there the software itself wasn't very responsive. You can cut down on this time by adding a shortcut to your home screen and by keeping the music software running in the background so it launches more quickly. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to Start Music (sec)

Dedicated Music Controls (2.0)
When music is playing there is a plugin on the home screen that allows you to see what's playing and quickly jump back into the software. You can also control music volume with the volume keys, duh.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (8.8)
We've been fans of Nokia's music software for quite awhile and the Nokia N78 is no exception. When you launch the software you get a listing of music sorting options, including Artist, Album, Playlists, title, Genre and Composer. Playlists are supported and you can create and edit playlists on the device. Tags for all of our music files were recognized and there's also a search feature so you can find exactly what you're looking for if you have a lot of songs on the device.

Album art is supported, but only if it is embedded in the music file. The library will automatically search your device for songs and add them to your music library. There's no support for rating songs or visualizations. Backround play is, of course, supported. There's also an equalizer on board with presets and the ability to create your own, although you can't adjust the equalizer on the fly. Overall the music software is incredibly fully featured and easy to use, exactly the combination that we like to see.

Online Song Downloading (0.0)
Nokia has launched an online music store in many markets worldwide, but it is still not available in the U.S. When it does become available you will be able to download songs directly to the N78, but who knows when that will happen.

Streaming (0.0)
Streaming Mp3, WMA or Real audio from the internet is not supported by the N78.

Podcast Support (7.0)
One of the things we really like about Nokia's N-Series devices is their excellent podcast software. Podcasts are integrated into the music software with their own category, but you can also manage podcasts in their own standalone application. You can subscribe to podcasts right in the application, download them directly to your phone and even set a schedule for when podcasts should be downloaded. This last is probably the best feature as you can just tell your phone to update all podcasts in the morning before you leave the house and then when you walk out the door you'll have all of your podcast content ready to go.

Music Sync with PC (7.0)
You can use Nokia's PC Suite to synchronize your music with your computer, or you can just use Windows Media Player. Synchronization with a Mac is not supported out of the box, but Nokia does have a downloadable program that will allow you to synchronize your N78 with iTunes.

Music Formats and DRM (4.0)
The Nokia N78 can play Mp3, AAC and WMA music files. It also supports Microsoft's DRM protected WMA music that you can purchase from stores like Napster.

Music Interruption (10.0)
The Nokia N78 handles an interruption to music playback by a phone call without any problems or hiccups. The music is paused when the call comes in and the starts up again when the call is finished.

Video Software Access (1.92)
The Nokia N78 took a ridiculous 10.4 seconds to get a video playing on the device. You can see below that this is significantly slower than any of our comparison phones. In fact it's amongst the worse time we've ever seen on a mobile device. This despite the fact that you can access videos from the top level of the menu system, something that wasn't true of music playback. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to Start Video (sec)

Video Controls (6.0)
When video is playing on the N78 the phone is held in landscape orientation. The center select key acts as play/pause, with the bottom soft key doing the same function and the top soft key assigned to stop. Fast forward and rewind is controlled via the Navi-Wheel functionality, just run your finger along the edges of the D-Pad clockwise to fast forward and clounter-clockwise to rewind. Pressing left/right will skip to the next or previous song while up/down will control volume, as will the volume keys themselves. These controls are slightly better than what we've seen from Nokia phones before, but the redundancy in having three ways to stop a video from playing is still silly.

Video Software & Organization (1.0)
We've never been fans of the Realplayer software used for video playback on Nokia's N-Series devices, but the N78 takes video software ridiculousness to new heights. First of all there's at least three different ways to get a video playing. You can go into the Photos application, where you'll incongrously find videos interspersed with photos. You can go into the Video Center application, where you'll more understandbly find just your videos, or you can open Realplayer directly and use the file browser to open a video.

Compounding the problem is that different programs were able to play back differen videos. For example we were able to play back our H264 encoded videos in the Photos application, but not in the Video Center. Really Nokia? You have to go into Photos to play back videos? None of the different pieces of software offers any features for organizing your videos. As it is video on the N78, and frankly all S60 devices, is a train-wreck. Nokia needs to address this problem by standardizing on a single video playback application that plays all the videos it's supposed to. Until that happens we recommend you go out and pick up the excellent Coreplayer or some other video playback software if you have any interest in watching a lot of videos on your N78 without wanting to pull out your hair.

Video Sync with PC (7.0)
As with music you can use Nokia's PC Suite software to synchronize videos between your computer and N78, or you can just use Windows Media Player directly.

Video Formats (7.0)
With the caveat that we weren't able to get all video types playing in the innappropriately named Video Center software, we were able to get 3GP, Mpeg-4, H264, Windows Media Video and Real Video paying on the N78, mostly using the Photos software (yeah, we know). We were not able to play back Flash or Quicktime video. Still the range of video formats supported is nice to see, too bad the video software itself is so terrible.

Video DRM (0.0)
The Nokia N78 is not capable of playing back any DRM protected video.

Video Playback Smoothness (4.0)
We were deeply dissapointed to see that the Nokia N78 was only able to handle our two lowest bitrate test video files encoded in H264. We've seen other Nokia devices like the N82 handle even high bitrate video files without a problem. This might be due to more limited hardware in the N78, which is in the middle of Nokia's smart phone lineup while the N82 is near the top.

Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The Nokia N78 does not support any direct download of premium video content directly to your phone.

Video Streaming unscored
We don't score this section as streaming mobile video on the web has not yet become standardized, but we do look at several services to see if the phone supports them. The N78 was able to play back streaming flash video from Youtube.com, although the performance was not all it could be, in fact it was pretty bad, probably another casualty of the N78's limited hardware. Youtube's mobile site fared better, and we're glad to see support well integrated as you can add it as a video source to the Video Center software as well as access it via the web. Zoovision's mobile streaming video was also supported, but not Windowsmedia.com.