A little about the N78

Been fiddling with the N78 the whole day and here are my thoughts about the device.



Good:
- It's one of the slimmest N-Series I've handled and its a candy bar.
- NaviWheel : Touch sensitive navigation wheel
- GeoTagging : Location information attached to the photos you take. I tried this out and it works really well. Worked well even from my balcony. A GPS lock is really quick on the N78.
- Really impressive is the Maps application. Although I didn't download the voice module the navigation option was really cool, I searched for a nearby Chinese restaurant and went all the way following the route on Map's.

Rest of the good features are because of Symbian OS 9.3 on it
- *#0000# now opens up Device Manager instead of the standard dialog, showing some more info. The best part is finding new firmware availabiltiy is now just *#0000# ->Options->Check for updates. I did a firmware upgrade OTA in just 3 mins ;)
- The 'Open recent photo/Gallery' key next to the camera key is no more. Wasn't required at all, thanks.
- Access point grouping : Set priorities to access points, cool feature.
- Internet radio now available in Radio application itself.
- More 'Menu View' options, Grid/List/Horse Shoe/V-Shaped
- Standby themes : Horizontal icon bar/ Basic / Vertical Icon bar
- Themes with lots of effects and transitions. Worth mentioning is the Haze theme.
- Bluetooth with option to block specific devices.
- Contacts now has option to show Phone memory/Sim memory/Service numbers.
- Alerts and other messages have been changed , like when switching off the Alert is "Good Bye".
When battery is full , "Battery full. Unplug charger to save energy" etc... have been added.

Lots of such settings and options now available.


Bad:
- As I've already said, the keypad is really bad. Its all cramped up. 5 mins of continuous use will definitely give a painful thumb.
- 3.2 MP camera. With 6220 and N82 having the same price margin I think this phone should have got a 5MP on it.
- As I did with the auto-rotation feature on the N95, I switched off the NaviWheel feature. I feel a lot of work needs to make the NaviWheel operating smoothly.
- When outdoors its really difficult to hear any voice even with the earpiece volume set to full. There's a little improvement after I upgraded the firmware.
- The radio stops taking next/prev button commands from the headset once the radio application goes to the background or the keypad is locked.
- Can't see any screensaver :( , not even the default one. On keypad lock it feels the phone is switched off. This feature (which started with the 6630) , the light sensor, would turn on/off the keypad lights depending upon the surrounding light conditions is of no use on this phone. To see the numbers the lights should remain ON.