Nokia N78 Cell Phone Review - Organizer

The Nokia N78's organizer has none of the upgrades we saw on the Nokia E66, which is a shame as it leaves the N78 with a more limited selection of organizer capabilities.

Synchronization (6.67)
The Nokia N78 can be synchronized with a Windows computer using Nokia's PC Suite software. The software is straightforward to set up and works over USB and Bluetooth. Contacts, including photos, tasks, notes, calendar appointments and files can all be synchronized. Synchronization is supported with Outlook and Lotus Notes on the PC side. If you're using a Mac you can use Mac's iSync software, however you will need to download a plugin for the phone that can be found here.

Alerts (5.0)
Alerts on the Nokia N78 can be set up for calendar appointments and tasks. You have a lot of flexibility about when the alert will sound as you can enter the exact time and date you want. You can't set the sound for the alert, this is handled by the currently active profile instead. When an alert sounds the screen flashes at you and you see information about the item. An alert can be dismissed or snoozed for five minutes, which is less flexibility than Windows Mobile phones like the Blackjack II that offers you a choice of a wide variety of snooze times.

Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
Out of the box the N78 does not support any form of over the air PIM synchronization. There are applications you can install to get support for various services, however.

Adding Contacts (5.04)
It took us an average of 19.86 seconds to add a contact and phone number to the Nokia N78. This is just a bit below average, as you can see below, with the biggest problem being entering data using the small and fiddly keypad. Despite this the time isn't bad, although it's nowhere near as fast as a phone with a QWERTY like the LG enV2 or Samsung Blackjack II. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to Add Contact (sec)

Looking/Sorting/Search (3.5)
Unlike the Nokia E66, the N78 does not have the software upgrade that allows you to search through your contacts using predictive search. Instead you'll need to spell out names using multi-tap. What this means is that if you want to search for Joe, you'll have to hit 5-6-6-6-3-3-3. With predictive text search you could hit 5-6-3 instead. Also missing from the contacts upgrades we saw on the E66 is the ability to get a quick list for a selected contact by hitting left on the D-Pad. We hope to see these features in a future firmware upgrade. Contacts can be sorted by last name or first name, and you can also view them by group.

Fields (13.6)
When you go to create a contact on the Nokia N78 you get eleven initial fields, but the S60 software the N78 allows you to add dozens of additional fields by clicking on the left soft key to open the Options menu and choosing Add detail. You can also rename any field you want, which makes the fields on the N78 some of the most flexible we've seen on any device.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (5.67)
Like most phones you can assign any contact to a speed dial on your keypad on the Nokia N78. There's also Nokia's voice command software built in for voice dialing. You don't have to train any voice tags, which the N78 doesn't support, instead just press and hold the left soft key to activate the voice command. The N78 was able to recognize all five of our diverse contact names, although we did note that the voice command software was a little slow to load.

Adding Calendar Items (7.52)
It took us an average of 13.3 seconds to add a calendar appointment to the Nokia N78. This is a bit faster than average, although nowhere near as fast as the Blackjack II.

We were helped by a shortcut on the home screen that took us directly to the calendar, but were slowed down a bit by having to activate the alert before the appointment manually instead of having it set automatically. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to Add Appointment (sec)

Calendar Views (4.22)
As we saw with contacts the Nokia N78 does not have the upgrades to the calendar application that we saw on the Nokia E66. This is a shame as we found the calendar views on the E66 to be more usable that the standard S60 calendar views that we've seen on ther devices like the N82. We again hope that these improvements are rolled out to all of Nokia's S60 devices in a firmware upgrade.

On the N78 you get monthly, weekly and daily views. On the monthly view you see the current month with the current day underlined and days that have appointments with a small triangle indicating it. Highlighting a day with appointments will give you a small pop-up that lists the appointments for that day. The week view is a typical grid with days along the top and hours on the left. Appointments are blocked out during the time they are scheduled, and when you highlight an appointment you get a small popup with the title and start time of the appointment. The daily view gives you the most information.

Here you get a list of all appointments for that day, with title, start/end time and indicators for things like alerts and recurrence. Overall the calendar views are good, but not as good as they could be, as the E66 has taught us.

Fields (8.0)
Creating a new calendar appointment on the Nokia N78 gives you a fairly basic set of fields. You have title, location, start/end, alert and recurrence. You can also add a desription of the appointment, which can be found under the left soft key menu. The alert is very flexible, you can set it up for any time you want. The recurrence options are less flexible, you can only choose from a small set of preset recurrence options including dialy, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly and yearly. There's no support for categories or all-day appointments.

Adding ToDo/Task (10.46)
We were able to add a task to the Nokia N78 in a speedy 9.56 seconds. You can see below that this is faster than the N82 or Blackjack II and significantly faster than average. Tasks on the N78, as with all S60 devices, are built into the calendar application. With the shortcut on the home screen we were able to get into the calendar application quickly to create a new task. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to Add Task (sec)

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (3.5)
There is a specific task view on the N78 that lists all of your to-dos. Tasks are organized by due date, but there are no other sorting options available. You can prioritize tasks, but there is no support for categories.

Fields (5.0)
When you create a task on the Nokia N78 you have a very basic set of fields: title, due date, alarm, priority and description. There's no support for categories or recurrence.

Adding Notes (3.43)
It took us an average of 14.56 seconds to add a new note to the Nokia N78. This is right about average, with a few of our comparison phones doing better, and some doing worse.

We were slowed down by the fact that the notes application is buried two levels deep in the menu system. If you need faster access to notes we recommend adding the notes application to your home screen. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to Add Note (sec)

Note Interface (2.0)
The notes interface on the Nokia N78 is the typical S60 notes application. You get a list of notes with the newest created at the top. There are no other options for sorting your notes. Categories are not supported, and ther is no search feature either, although you can use the phone's global search feature to look for notes. The left soft key opens a menu that allows you to create new notes, delete existing ones or send them to others.

Note Formatting (0.0)
There are no formatting options available for notes, so you can't format text with things like Bold or Italics, nor can you add media like photos or audio to a text note.

Voice Memo (3.0)
The N78 has the typical S60 voice memo application, which means you can record a voice memo with a maximum length of sixty seconds. That's about it.