Hands-on Preview of the Nokia N78

[slitchfield]

Rafe also spent a lot of time with the Nokia N78 at Mobile World Congress. Here's his detailed and illustrated preview. A natural evolution of the best-selling N73, despite the hardware improvements, it's the software and services improvements that really caught Rafe's imagination, taking Ovi and a much more rounded package to the mass market.

Read on in the full article.

[krisse]

Great preview Rafe, like you say it's a budget alternative to more expensive smartphone models and the N73 proved there's a large market for such a device.

Interesting to see GPS included, it's also included on the other upcoming budget smartphone the 6220, and one wonders if this will soon become as ubiquitous on phones as a camera. It's now getting easier to see why Nokia has spent literally billions on purchasing satellite navigation companies, they clearly see GPS' future as not just a popular feature but a must-have feature.

Very nice preview Rafe, looks set to be a very successful handset.

Like you Krisse I see GPS becoming ubiquitous in the medium-term. From Nokiaworld it was very apparent that this is a key direction for Nokia, its almost certain that they view it as a "must-have" feature (or at least attaining that status very soon).

From my own experience, coming to an N95 having never had a GPS device before, its one of those things that "you never knew that you always needed to have". Good analogies would be power-steering in cars, or broadband internet; once you've experienced them they are not something that you'd be willing to forego afterwards. I think the penetration of GPS is such that its close to reaching a critical mass in the average consumer awareness, I think Nokia's research tells them this also, and they're positioning themselves well to reap benefit there.

[95%]

Rafe, thanks for the first real review of this phone. Regarding the FM transmitter, you mention that it is activated within the Music Player. Is it also possible to direct Internet Radio output to the car's sound system? One can imagine how useful that would be during a long road trip.

[bartmanekul]

I think that if it would have had the 5mp cam and xenon flash, it would possibly be the best seller of that batch of phones (N96, 6220 classic, 6210 navigator etc).

Personally Im looking forward to a 6220 classic hands on review.

[Rafe]

Originally Posted by krisse

Interesting to see GPS included, it's also included on the other upcoming budget smartphone the 6220, and one wonders if this will soon become as ubiquitous on phones as a camera. It's now getting easier to see why Nokia has spent literally billions on purchasing satellite navigation companies, they clearly see GPS' future as not just a popular feature but a must-have feature.

Absolutely. Location based services make a lot more sense if you've got a GPS on board. I think of the Navteq acquisition as being about buying the base component / DNA of location in general. I suspect it also helps Nokia get the kind of location data they need (i.e. they can direct Navteq to build up pedestrian and multi-modal information).

Originally Posted by NZtechfreak

Very nice preview Rafe, looks set to be a very successful handset.

From my own experience, coming to an N95 having never had a GPS device before, its one of those things that "you never knew that you always needed to have". Good analogies would be power-steering in cars, or broadband internet; once you've experienced them they are not something that you'd be willing to forego afterwards. I think the penetration of GPS is such that its close to reaching a critical mass in the average consumer awareness, I think Nokia's research tells them this also, and they're positioning themselves well to reap benefit there.

Yes I agree. And I think the potential has only just begun to be tapped. Devices like the N78 (i.e. towards the mid tier) will create a large potential user base so I'd expect to see more things that use the GPS come along in the next year from third parties. There's already some good stuff out there - Viewranger springs to mind, and there's also a number of activity tracking apps. Thanks for the nice words on the preview too!

Originally Posted by 95%

Rafe, thanks for the first real review of this phone. Regarding the FM transmitter, you mention that it is activated within the Music Player. Is it also possible to direct Internet Radio output to the car's sound system? One can imagine how useful that would be during a long road trip.

Yes I believe so. I can't be 100% because I didn't check that.

[krisse]

From my own experience, coming to an N95 having never had a GPS device before, its one of those things that "you never knew that you always needed to have".

Yes, same here when I first tried it on a 6110. It was just like when I first had a mobile phone at all, there was an initial scepticism followed by a "gosh, isn't this useful?" phase and then eventually "how did I ever manage without it?".

GPS is something that practically anyone could benefit from, no matter where you live or what you do, it's just a question of waiting for the equipment to get cheap enough and portable enough.

113mm N78 versus 102mm on the K850, that is a huge difference. Whilst the 2.4 inch screen is good, I feel that Nokia phones are suffering from some serious physical bloat and this one is another that is too big. 113mm is almost as big as a hiuge slab iphone, it's unacceptable for something that people want to carry about all the time.

If this carries on I'm heading back to S40.

[krisse]

Unregistered, it might be better to compare CC (volume) figures instead of thickness, some phones are very thin but very wide so they may actually be quite large.

The trouble is manufacturers don't always publish these CC figures, and you can't easily work it out from the dimensions because phones usually aren't shaped like boxes.

[Kazutoyo]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

113mm N78 versus 102mm on the K850, that is a huge difference. Whilst the 2.4 inch screen is good, I feel that Nokia phones are suffering from some serious physical bloat and this one is another that is too big. 113mm is almost as big as a hiuge slab iphone, it's unacceptable for something that people want to carry about all the time.

I kinda agree. I'm gonna buy a new phone soon, and I'm having a hard choice between 6120c and N78. 6120 for the smaller size and N78 for the features (3.5mm jack, FP2, larger battery and so on).

I don't feel there's any bloat here, though. The N-series is highly targetted towards multimedia, and most people who want to use their phones for multimedia, also want larger screens. I, however, think a 2" screen would be enough but I reckon I'm in the minority for these kind of phones.

If the 6120c had a 3.5mm jack, then I would easily pick that phone. I wonder how long it will take until we see a 6120 replacement (6220c is too big), although it probably doesn't matter since Nokia seem to only use 3.5mm jacks for their 5xxx phones and N series.

Do we have "Timed profile" (where in a profile can be activated for a specific duration) in N78? I think it should be part of the FP2 feature list!

I reckon K850 is comparable, its always been the width and more importantly the depth of phones that's been more important for me. But I guess everyone wants something different.

[Rafe]

Originally Posted by BK76

Do we have "Timed profile" (where in a profile can be activated for a specific duration) in N78? I think it should be part of the FP2 feature list!

Yes, that's a standard part of FP2.

Originally Posted by krisse

Unregistered, it might be better to compare CC (volume) figures instead of thickness, some phones are very thin but very wide so they may actually be quite large.

No, this doesn't work out. For a casual dresser who wants to keep a phone in a jeans pocket, the width and height dimensions make a big difference. A too slim phone becomes a more fragile phone. An N95 is only 1 cm longer than a standard credit card which is OK, but borders on the too deep, (however much better than the N80).

[krisse]

No, this doesn't work out. For a casual dresser who wants to keep a phone in a jeans pocket, the width and height dimensions make a big difference. A too slim phone becomes a more fragile phone.

I suppose that's what I was trying to say too, a slim phone which is very wide may be less convenient than a thick phone which is very narrow.

Some people just talk about thickness, but like you say that's not the whole story.