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There is a front-facing camera for two-way video calling, as well as the main camera. Yes, the latter can geotag your photos, but as mentioned earlier it offers 3.2-megapixel capture. With 5-megapixels becoming the norm on higher end phones, it might appear that Nokia has sold itself short here.

However, the Carl Zeiss optics with auto focus, macro mode and LED (not xenon) flash all help matters along nicely, plus we should not forget that cramming more megapixels onto a tiny sensor can actually be detrimental to picture quality in terms of elevated noise (a 3.2-megapixel sensor has the potential to offer cleaner images than a 5-megapixel one of the same size). Anyway, with all the settings on auto mode and the flash turned off my tests shots were encouraging.

The coloured dish is well defined and colour reproduction is very good. Taken outdoors on a dull and wet day the chair photo is quite acceptable, while the flower, photographed very close up indeed, shows the camera's ability to capture detail nicely, especially the water droplets.

When it comes to data storage there is 70MB of built in memory, and the phone comes with a 2GB microSD card which fits into a slot on the left edge of the casing.

Music output quality and volume level were both good. Stereo speakers sit on the left and right edges of the casing. The headset is two piece with a 3.5mm connector just past the microphone and inline music controls and a 3.5mm connector into the phone too (hooray!)

Battery life was quite impressive. From a full charge I got ten and a quarter hours of non-stop music. Obviously if you thrash the 3G, Wi-Fi or GPS services then you may need quite regular power boosts, though.

An FM radio and access to Internet radio boost things musically (the latter probably best used over Wi-Fi). And in case you think I've forgotten about that feature I've never seen before in a mobile, here it comes - an FM transmitter that you can use to send music to your car (or any other) radio.

Verdict

The N78 doesn't bring much that is new to Nokia's ‘multimedia computer' concept and as such is a bit of a disappointment. That said there are some neat features such as the FM transmitter and the ability to rotate the display, but as a phone it's a bit chunky for the pocket and the number pad is far too fiddly.

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