17 March 2008

Nokia N78 and Feature Pack 2
reviewed by the Mobile Review

I’ve just found there that there is a pretty detailed Nokia N78 review written by Eldar Murtazin from the well-known Russian Mobile Portal.

To be honest I am even more impressed with the fact that he is always getting and reviewing the latest Nokia device few months before the others than the review itself.

He must have some ingenious K.G.B. mole positioned very well in Nokia ;)

Anyway, by his words: Call quality was never an issue with the N78, as it easily lived up to our expectations of a Nokia-branded phone. Ring tones sounded quite loud thanks to the handset’s dual speakers.

However, all things considered, it is more of a mixed bag – while it is the first device to pack in the FP2 and all the ensuing benefits of it, being a very well-rounded do-it-all solution with fairly decent camera, GPS and Wi-Fi.

On the other hand, though, its keypad’s ergonomics could be better and the design is something you will love or hate outright. But all in all, there aren’t that many real drawbacks to the N78, for the most part it is all up to the owner’s personal preferences and taste.

When it arrives in May, the N78 has what it takes to get popular in almost no time. With it around, the sales of the Nokia N81 don’t look so optimistic anymore, also some other solutions are likely to get a slap, but that’s what we already pondered over at the beginning of this piece. On balance, the N78 has no direct competition as far as other manufacturers are concerned.

Basically, the S60 platform is already at the stage when powerhouses with this operating system inside become a bargain, and the N78 is just the right example of this ongoing trend. For 350 Euro, which is what its price tag will read at first, you won’t wind any alternative boasting a bundled GPS module. In fact, Nokia is looking very strong with this duo (N78 and N82).

Apart from the N78 review, yesterday I also found over at forum section that they have managed to translate its S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 review to English and if you want to see something more than a screens you should give it a try, it is really huge and detailed FP2 overview.

The update to the S60 3rd edition in the form of the FP2 is more than just a skin-deep revamp - on the contrary, it brings about a thorough overhaul of both the interface and device philosophy.

By packing in the latest versions of Maps 2.0, Search 4.0, Photos application (which is more of an add-on over the standard Gallery), providing access to OVI’s online services as well as support for the N-Gage and tacking on the multimedia menu (primarily for the NSeries), Nokia has raised the bar for similar solutions on the market. The out-of-the-box functionality of the FP2 is extremely rich and frees the user from the necessity to install extra software in order to do most things he might ever need with his phone – all relevant applications are already onboard.

As far as the FP2’s letdowns go, we couldn’t overlook its relatively weak PIM functionality (Calendar, for one). While its support for vCalendar 2.0 enables you to get data on meetings and confirm them via messages, the bundled Calendar application is more on the spartan side feature-wise. In this case, the maker sticks to the notion that mobile phones serve as terminals, whereas the user’s main data base with contacts and schedules are stored on his PC. I suppose this approach has every right to exist, but more punch out of the box wouldn’t go amiss either.

On the other hand, the mail client has undergone little to no change at all – basically, that’s the next application that has to be refurbished in a big way, thankfully there is a good benchmark to look after, a third party application that is widely considered as the best way to go by many owners of the S60 smartphones.

Animation utilized in the menu doesn’t make much difference, although it delivers some new experience, making the handset more fun to navigate through. The platform’s potential can’t be underestimated, this way the FP2 will be the primary offering in the S60 smartphone segment in 2008-2009; the next update is still quite far off, on top of that it will advance in a couple of fields at once – networking, personal mobile phone-based data services and thus totally different selection of services, plus step-by-step simplifications of the interface along with making it more flamboyant and smooth overall. These are the two foremost fields of interest as far as the S60’s development goes.

That said, based on the FP2’s core functionality, there is no doubt that today it is one of the market’s most powerful smartphone platforms that will remain unrivaled in the near term, as no other player can offer similar punch right out of the box.

Read the full reviews on Mobile Review

Nokia N78 review

Feature Pack 2 review