We spent some time with the Nokia N78 today, which was originally announced at Mobile World Congress a couple of months ago. The update to the venerable and very successful Nokia N73 (
review), the N78 runs the latest version of Symbian Series 60. The phone has a few updates compared to its predecessor but has also taken a step back and stood still in some areas.
On the plus side the N78 adds GPS functionality, a feature that Nokia has been rolling out across its N-Series lineup. You can use the GPS for regular GPS-like things as well as geo-tagging your photos.
Speaking of which, the N78 is integrated with Nokia's new Ovi lineup of services, allowing you to upload photos and videos directly from the device. You can then use Ovi to share those items with other popular services like Flickr. We have to give Nokia props for understanding that the power of the internet and allowing integration with third party services. The N78 also has a built in FM Transitter that you can use to listen to music on any FM radio, something that we hope to see in other devices as well.
In the standing still department the N78 has the same 3.2 megapixel camera and LED flash the N73 had. Given that the Nokia 6220 Classic (
video) has a five megapixel camera and Xenon flash we're a little befuddled by the choice, but at least it's not a step back as we saw in the ergonomics. Specifically the N78's keypad is almost unusable and the lens cover that was found on both of its predecessors, the N73 and N70, is now gone.
The keypad is particularly frustrating as Nokia seems to be making this mistake over and over again with its new devices. The keypad is actually made up of four very narrow bars that sit very close to one another and use only a fraction of the available real estate. Not only is it cramped but the fact that each bar has three different "buttons" on it means that mistaken presses are inevitable. This is the worst keypad we've seen on a Nokia device, and we aren't particularly fond of Nokia's keypad designs in the first place.
The Nokia N78 will be available in the second quarter of 2008 at an estimated price of 350 Euros. We know there will be a U.S. version because we caught it on the FCC (
article) a few weeks ago, but availability and pricing for that model hasn't been announced.
