Nokia N78

Camera
The N78 comes equipped with a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera with flash and Carl Zeiss optics. There are plenty of features to choose from: white balance, various scene modes, contrast and brightness and exposure compensation to ISO selection and color tones. As mentioned earlier, the Geotagging feature allows images to be tagged with the location once the antenna icon at the bottom of the screen changes accordingly.

In Macro mode what’s remarkable is that you can take get some really closeup shots of the objects in focus. The colors are retained fairly well and the level of detail is quite high. For some reason though, even when you’ve switched off the flash, it will still fire if you’re taking a closeup.

It hasn’t been raining much in Mumbai, but even so the sun has been reluctant to show itself. Due to this it’s been a bit tricky getting normal daylight pictures, so I had to use the Cloudy White Balance setting most of the time. You’ll notice that the images still appear a bit pastel and blotchy in certain areas, but the detailing is still quite good.

Battery Life
The battery life of the N78 is something impressive. I managed to easily get almost 3 hours and 45 minutes of talktime. On an average the N78 will give you over two days of usage including calls, messages, net connectivity, music and even a little camera usage. You will drain the battery if you use the GPS too much. If you happen to be someone who uses a mobile to its fullest capabilities and wants good battery life, the N78 is something to think about.

The Bottomline
I liked using the N78, except when it hung after the card got full, and when issues with the tardy GPS cropped up. Apart from these, the N78 is definitely a good handset with a great battery life. It has a loud-as-hell music player, good camera quality, and Geotagging (when it works). The only problem is it costs Rs 19,000, which is a bit steep when you consider that the price of the N82 has dropped to Rs 19,500 in the gray market. The latter gets you a 5MP camera with Xenon flash, an accelerometer, and GPS. You only miss out on Geotagging – for which you have Nokia's free Location Tagger application in any case. I don't think this is too tough a decision to make.

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Specs