Nokia's N78: Why Wait For The Next Generation?

Nokia has announced that its sleek, new, N79 smart phone will be available some time in the fourth calendar quarter of the year -- and we look forward very much to seeing it. But in the interim, we've become so impressed with the N78 smart phone from Nokia that it's hard to tell anyone they (or if they're a solution provider, their customer) to hold off until then.

The Nokia N78 we found fun but powerful. And, since the announcement of the N79, it's possible to find an N78 priced way below what had been a $520 list price for the device.

The N78 is built with a nice, bright 2.4-inch display; with a compact 4.5 inch-by-2 inch-by-quarter inch form factor that weighs barely a couple of ounces. It provides as much as 70 MB of internal memory and supports a MicroSD Card. It can shoot as much as two hours of video -- which we tested out by using to stream video to an account at Qik.com. (Qik, a Website developed in part by a former top Oracle executive, allows users with some specific smart phones to stream live video from their handheld over the Web).

According to Nokia, the N78 provides 190 minutes of talk time on WCDMA networking or 260 minutes on GSM; "video calling" of up to 125 minutes and "stand-by" time of 320 hours. Using it for a variety of video and audio functions (since it's designed as a true multi-function device), we found it lasted between two and four hours under heavy-duty video and voice usage. The N78 is also fine for more traditional smart phone functions, including email, SMS, MP3 playing and more.

Its mapping and GPS also work fine.

Bottom Line: The Nokia N78, like most of the other Nokia devices we've looked at recently, is a solid, nicely functioning device that could make a solid platform for mobile business use; as such, the Test Center has no problem recommending it either to VARs or to anyone in the retail space.