Phone rating: 
In a nutshell: A very powerful smartphone with a 3.2 megapixel camera and assisted GPS, but seriously let down by a dysfunctional keypad. Choose the Nokia N95 8GB instead.
Best buy: *Free* with half-price line rental from Mobiles.co.uk; or on Pay as you Go from the Carphone Warehouse at £279.95.
The Nokia N78. A highly anticipated smartphone with many powerful features. The feature list is finger-lickin good: Series 60 smartphone with 3.6 Mbps HSDPA, WiFi, assisted GPS navigation with preloaded maps, a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar lens, autofocus & flash, a video camera with stereo audio recording, a secondary camera for video calling, a superb MP3 player with a Navi wheel for easy access to your music, an FM radio. And all this in a compact classic design that weighs just 102g and looks great. There are even bonus features such as FM transmitter that lets you play your music on your car stereo.
On paper it's a fabulous phone. Only the lack of a 5 megapixel camera stops it from being Nokia's best smartphone ever. Yet we hate it.
Why do we hate it? Because of its keypad. Actually to say that it has a keypad is overstating things. The Nokia N78 has some numbers painted on its front and some floppy pieces of plastic that wiggle up and down if you push them hard. Maybe the number that you pushed will come up, maybe another, who knows? Maybe after a couple of frustrated minutes struggling to write a text or dial a number, you'll take a hammer to the keys and give this phone what it deserves. What on earth have Nokia done?
We had really been looking forward to this phone, but we're disappointed. It's not a phone that we can recommend. Brave souls will persevere with the keypad and may learn to tolerate it, but we would recommend the Nokia N95 8GB instead.
Initially we awarded the phone 1 star. A couple of people sent us rude email as a result. We've calmed ourselves done now and rustled up a couple more stars, but we're still angry with Nokia for messing up such a good product.
By the way, plenty of people agree with us. gsmarena says, "The knobs are way too tiny and there are no borders of any kind between keys within the same row. So far we are having quite a rough time typing on the N78." hardwarezone.com says "we found ourselves frustrated as we fumbled and encountered numerous double tapping." igadgetlife says it all: "what were you thinking Nokia?"
Features of the Nokia N78 include:
- 3G Symbian phone with S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2
- Assisted GPS navigation with preloaded regional maps
- 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics & Tessar Lens with autofocus, 20x digital zoom, LED flash and photo editor
- Video: MPEG4/3GP VGA video capture at 15 fps, AAC stereo audio with 8x digital zoom and video editor
- Secondary CIF camera (352 x 288 pixels)
- Display: TFT, 16 million colours, 240 x 320 pixels (2.4 inches)
- Music player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ & WMA formats) with playlists, equaliser and album art
- FM radio
- Stereo speakers plus Nokia Stereo Headset HS-45/AD-54 included in sales package
- FM transmitter
- Messaging: SMS, MMS, email (SMTP, IMAP4, POP3) with attachment support for images, videos, music and documents
- Java & Symbian applications
- Advanced S60 PIM features including contacts, calendar, to-do list, notes, recorder, calculator, clock, converter
- Memory: 70 Mbytes plus microSD memory card slot (2GB card included)
- Connectivity: WLAN, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0, 3.5mm audio connector
- Internet: EGPRS class B, EDGE, HSDPA (up to 3.6 Mbps download), Nokia Web Browser with Mini Map, RSS feeds
- Dual mode WCDMA 900/2100 (HSDPA) plus quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
- Size: 113 x 49 x 15.1 mm
- Weight: 102g
- Talktime: 190 minutes (3G) - 260 minutes (2G)
- Battery standby: up to 320 hours
