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Overview

The phone looks pretty. As for the button, some people around me complain that it’s hard to press, but I think it’s kind of okay. It’s just a matter of getting used to it. But I think the ‘Cancel’ button should be on the top right, not at the bottom right. But after using it for some time, it kind of lags. And why doesn’t the N78 have any games in it?

From: Bibi_Lala
Personally, the first thing that I like about the N78 is its looks. Without reading about it, I tried to figure out what this phone’s main feature is, but it seems like it has a balance of multimedia experiences. While it was fun to experience and has a variety of multimedia features that are available, I feel that the phone should have higher specifications to make the overall experience of a well-balanced phone a more powerful one. Otherwise, it’ll just be a jack-of-all-trades, but a master of none.

From: euniqueflair
The Nokia N78 is a stylish phone that’s really light in the pocket as well as jammed pack full of features found in higher end phones. I find myself addicted to its features like the FM transmitter as well as the newly introduced touch sensitive directional pad. An affordable powerhouse, it is

From: juliancho
A cool and stylish multimedia power house, check out the sleek glossy finish of the N78. Under that jet black exterior is anything more then just pure aesthetics. Pure power merged with aesthetic appeal is what I like to call it. More than just a phone, it encourages you to explore differently.

From: SerSiTiv
The design of the N78 follows the style of N81 and N82. Compared with the official photos on Nokia’s website, the N78 definitely looks better in real life. However, the glossy surface is prone to greasing and after a few minutes of use, one would need to find a cloth to wipe the surface clean. The keypad resembles the one found on the N82, except that the numeric keys are much more comfortable when compared to the N82’s. However, I do find some problems in using the left and right soft buttons. The absence of “pop up” buttons caused me to accidentally hit on the cancel (red call button) instead of exit. It does cause a bit of annoyance at the start, but after using it for some time, I managed to minimise the probability of hitting on the wrong keys. The device is powered by a high capacity battery (1200 mAh), like the one found in the N95 8GB. The battery has yet to “run in”, hence it only yields around two days of usage. It might improve after a few charging cycles, though. The firmware requires some fixing though, as it crashed on quite a few occasions when I was toying with the FM Transmitter function.

From: Shadowandy
By numbering, the N78 is a lesser featured phone compared to the N81? Definitely, NO. In fact, other than having N-gage and an 8GB version, the N78 beats the N81 hands down with many better features such as 3.5G, A-GPS and an FM transmitter. For me, my main complaint is the key placement. Other than that, I feel the phone is of the right size and weight.

From: xanthus_f
The overall experience with the Nokia N78 during my trial period was average. The design is unique, but button navigation was painful and one major fault I found in the N78 is that the phonebook contacts cannot be dialled directly.

From: Adwin Lee
I like the look of the N78. It has a blend of clean simplicity and classy looks. With its curved edges and radical numeric keypad, it can easily stand out as one of the best designed phones in the Nokia range. But once I held it in my hand, it disappointed me, big time. It does not give me a good feel like the 6300 or the E51 did. I can’t really explain it clearly in words, but maybe the plastic feel makes it feel more like a toy phone than a multimedia road warrior.

From: Anuar Subari
The N78 is a cool looking black phone with its quick menus with animated icons running the latest Symbian S60 OS, which makes it a joy to use. My only gripe with this phone is the lack of support for N-gage Games, wassup with that Nokia?

From: Brian Wong
Generally, I like the look of the phone. It’s light, slim and has a decent-sized screen without being too gigantic, like those PDA phones. I also love the breathing standby function. When scrolling, it’s easy to hit the wrong application, because the Navi-wheel button is a little too sensitive, although it works pretty well for the photo gallery. The number buttons being in single-line style are a bit difficult to hit when my nails are a tad long. Other than that, the quick keys at the right and left sides are useful. Installing the Nokia PC Suite took way too long and the applications it came with are hard to figure out how to use. I couldn’t even figure out how to transfer my photos from the phone to my PC. I had to cut and paste, manually. The instruction manual was not helpful.

From: Ellie Doong
The sleek Nokia N78 comes packed with a few new features that other Nseries are missing. It comes with a Navi-Wheel that’s similar to the iPod MP3 player’s and new customised view modes such as 3D V-shape or horseshoe views. I’m disappointed with the pre-installed themes and the lack of pre-installed games, though. The themes use similar background pictures, but with different colour highlights.

From: Heng Wan
From my first look at this phone, I was captured by its glossy black front and silver sides. The downside is that the front is a fingerprint magnet which soaked up grease and oil from my fingers, so constant cleaning is needed to keep up the shine. The size of the candy bar phone is just nice for my hands and slips effortlessly into the front pockets of my jeans.

From: Howard Francis
This is definitely the lightest Nseries device that I have ever used. The 5-way navigation key requires a bit of getting used to, though. The new Symbian interface is slightly laggy as compared with the previous version and the SIM card slot is a total nightmare. There is no way I can remove the SIM card from the phone with my bare hands.

From: Jacko New
The N78 has an improved design, with a slimmer body and more professional look. It feels nice in my hands and does not feel like a toy, unlike some of the previous models. Transitions during the switching of menus look impressive.

From: Leroy Ong
The Nokia N78 is very light-weight, compact and packed with the latest up-to-date technologies. However, with a glossy finish, while making the phone attractive, makes it prone to oil smudges from constant usage resulting in a sticky feeling experienced at the end of the day. A definite negative point is the smaller than usual number pad which makes messaging a troublesome and tiring activity. It certainly does not appeal to me or anyone prone to frequent messaging. Perhaps due to its feature-rich software, there is a significant lag when switching between applications.

From: Alvin Lim
The Nokia N78 looks cool in its dark, shiny surface finish. Nothing has changed much from a typical Nokia phone interface. The back cover was rather flimsy. It also hung twice while calling out during my 1 week trial.

From: Aron Goh
With it’s sleek design and stylish interface, the Nokia N78 really attracts me at the first look. Jumping from a Sony Ericsson Z60i to the Nokia N78 is a big step forward. Its functions were easy to use and navigating around the phone was not that hard, unlike what I expected (especially when I didn’t even read the manual). More surprisingly, the phone is lightweight and the transition features in it will surprise you.

From: Hajar
Manoeuvring around the menus is fast and straight forward using the D-pad. The active standby screen with customisable shortcuts is especially quick and useful to open my favourite applications with. Apart from the D-pad, the Navi-Wheel makes the task of scrolling through the long list of contacts or messages a breeze. However, due to its high sensitivity, I may sometimes accidently navigate using the Navi Wheel instead of the D-pad, which can be rather frustrating. The awkward placement of the call and end call buttons also makes me press the wrong key quite often. Perhaps more time is needed to get used to the placement of the keys.

From: Jeffery Lee
The experience of using the Nokia N78 feels entirely new and refreshing to me. It’s as though I’ve stepped into another world in venturing to the new generation of phones with its newest features and updated software. Navigation-wise, it’s rather swift and direct, although the Navi-Wheel is a little overly sensitive and unfortunately, unresponsive at times. The buttons aren’t very user-friendly with long fingernailed people, although the accuracy of hitting the right button despite it being single-lined with three buttons is almost 99%! I didn’t have any problems with it!

From: Karen Neo
The Nokia N78 is a value-for-money Nseries phone. It is a great phone because of its many features. The design looks solid, sleek and appealing (from far); however, once the lightweight plastic casing phone lands in your palm, the ’solid feel’ just fades away. Nonetheless, the light weight of the phone is commendable. This candy-bar phone’s plastic casing is also a real magnet for fingerprints (both front and back of the phone). The phone’s unusual location of buttons, the ‘C’ button (for delete or clearing), is very difficult to reach especially if you are a right hander and prefer to use one hand to create or delete messages. The overall keypad is not user friendly and I would say it is difficult for people with big thumbs or long fingernails to use. Other interesting features about the phone – The interface has a few interesting fade-ins and visual flourishes, the phone is very responsive and the touch sensitive four-way button in the center of the phone is useful. If you are looking for a value for money mobile phone with great features, the N78 definitely fits the bill.

From: Mitchel Quek
It is a good phone which has the capabilities to work like a smart phone. The front design for the bar-type keys is unique, but I find the keys are too small to do fast SMS messaging. It needs to improve on the touch sensitivity of the Nav-key D-pad. Overall, I give it 7/10 for its price and features. I would recommend my friends, especially ladies, to buy it.

From: Nik Chung
It’s a nice, stylish phone with a big screen and vibrant colours. It also has a fast and ultra user-friendly interface with a quick help guide. However, the phone has a glossy surface, so it would have been good if Nokia had provided a cleaning cloth. And the keypad’s also quite small, so it will take some time to get used to it.

From: Prem Chandar
Overall, it’s an improvement for the Nseries, although there are ups and downs to it. It’s a phone to have for those who want a simple, yet high-end phone.

From: Syaiful
Nokia has adapted the keypad so that there are no breaks in between keys. It can take some getting used to. You can adopt the trick of going for the extreme left and right ends, or sliding your finger from the extreme left to an estimation of where the middle would be. What really frustrated me is having the Call, Menu, End, and Clear buttons along the sides of the phone. You are literally pressing on the edge of the phone, and you have to press hard because the keys are not raised. Every press reminds you how “plasticky” it feels. This may work for a touch screen phone where every inch of phone real estate can be maximised, since a light pressure will suffice. But it’s just very bad ergonomics here. One thing which Nokia should retain is the option for changing the active toolbar from Horizontal to Vertical format. It’s brilliant since the display screen’s long, vertically. All in all, I wouldn’t go out and get a phone that I have to get around the design flaws. Even though Nokia throws in various tempting functions, I would get pretty irritated if I can’t even get past the design hurdle in the first place. It’s pretty frustrating for daily use.

From: Tiffany Chew
It is sleek, slim and best of all, it’s lightweight and it was lovely to slip the mobile into an evening purse on a night out. However, the downside for this model was that my finger print/marks could be found all over it due to the glossy exterior and the keypad was a little tiny for me (imagine, if you have long nails, navigating around the keypad is a nightmare), quite often I accidentally got logged out of the messaging menu.

From: Peggy Ho