The camera unit employed by N78 is going to satisfy most consumers; combined with the high comfort and quality of implementation of the rest of the functions, Nokia N78 makes on of the most balanced devices in the company's portfolio and on the whole market in general. The beginning price of 350 euros seems to be quite an adequate assessment, once it goes down the owners of N73 may also get interested in taking it to replace their old phones. The common points for the two include the compact size and the excellent GPS functionality, also an above-than-average quality camera.

In 2008, the product priorities have shifted from impressive camera capabilities to GPS navigation, Web services, higher data transition rates and better connectivity. That's why in this year we won't see any Nokia devices sporting cameras above 5 Mp, none with optical zoom are expected as well. A cardinal step towards even better cameras can be expected in 2009, while in a shorter perspective the upcoming models will be equipped with camera units offering a quality on a level with Nokia N82 and hardly anywhere above (same video and photo quality, xenon flash), gradually becoming more and more miniature. A good example of this trend is Nokia 6220 Classic, the best offer on the mass market, judging by the camera power related to the phone's price. Nokia N78 is a mid-end multimedia smartphone, the cheapest Nseries device, but at the same time a very balanced one. The camera isn't much better than the one used in the two-year-old former flagship N73, to which N78 is meant to be the official sequel, according to the company's press releases. However from the point of view of concept and ideology (if we might say so), the real successor is N82, the current flagship and leader in camera power and quality. In such a fashion Nokia are splitting a product line in two, offering two differently priced solutions to expand the portfolio. The two models offer a fair alternative to the once popular N73 and its music edition while the latter are gradually phasing out from the market.

As compared to Nokia N82, the junior model seems to have much more inferior characteristics, but a more profound investigation only proves Nokia N82 to excel in camera powers and hardly anything else. In other aspects, N78 is either better or on a level with the N82 model. This is true for the software platform (S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 2 Review), performance rates, battery life, audio quality and a multitude of less important things. The article devoted to the finalized commercial version of the N78 handset will feature a more detailed review of all these features, and for the time being let's take a closer look at the camera and its specifications.

Hardware implementation

The camera used in Nokia N78 has a better quality than in N73, the updated specs are now F2.8/4.6, though the difference is minimal. N78 makes a fair cameraphone, outpacing the competitors in the quality of photos, for instance such models as the recent 3.2 Mp cameraphones by Sony Ericsson or Motorola Z10.

The lens is left unprotected, so it's very exposed to physical damage and requires manual cleaning prior to shooting sessions. Not far from the lens resides the LED flash, which is in a sense an outdated solution – the majority of modern cameraphones are equipped with xenon flash units. However, it has enough power to be effective at distances shorter than a meter. It would hardly make a decent flashlight, though. Also the flash helps the auto-focusing mechanism to lock on an object even in the dark.

The camera is launched by pressing the right side rocker button. It's position is optimized for maximum comfort during shooting. The sound volume controls act as the zoom controls in the camera mode, the maximum zoom ratio is 20x. Once the camera is activated, these buttons are backlight while the numerical symbols fade away from the keyboard. It takes about 4 seconds for the camera application to launch. In the viewfinder mode, the screen isn't as inert as in Samsung U900 in terms of refresh delay and rate, though Nokia N95 still does better.

Interface and settings.

The interface utilizes landscape orientation, the viewfinder window optionally displays a number of status indicators (camera block, remaining number of shots, storage path) and a settings bar, which can be switched off.

The main settings include:

Image size:

• 0,3М (640x480),
• 0,8М (800x600),
• 1,3М (1280x960),
• 2М (1600x1200),
• 3М (2048x1536)

The same menu allows for activating the geo-tagging function, that is adding a GPS-acquired location tag to the photo. This may be very helpful to reporters, since sorting the photos by the geo tag data arranges them in a very convenient 'geographical history' fashion.

The miscellaneous options include the default filename for images and videos, the add to album function, the camera shutter sound and the default storage location. Unfortunately, there's no way to specify a particular folder. Oddly enough, such an option is a standard feature of Series 40 phones, leaving us to make guesses why Nokia took it out from a smartphone.

Videos can also taken in three different resolutions (up to 640x480, 15 fps) and geo-tagged, image stabilization and sound muting options are supported.

The device offers an exhaustive list of imaging options, being among the leaders in this aspect:

• switch to video mode
• shooting mode (auto, custom, macro, portrait, nighttime, nighttime portrait, panorama, sports – for moving objects)
• flash settings (Auto, on/off, red eye filter)
• timer (2, 10, 20 seconds)
• multiple shot (intervals of 10, 30, 60, 300, 600, 1800 seconds)
• exposure adjustment ( -2.0 - 2.0)
• white balance presets (Auto, sunny, cloudy, glow lamp, fluorescent lamp)
• effects (Sepia, negative, black and white, extra transparency)
• ISO setting
• Sharpness (Hard will give you some unnaturally sharp edges)
• Contrast (twenty-point scale)
• Brightness (ten-point scale)

As you see, the device possesses every imaginable imaging feature, offering a rich variety of effects, scene presets and settings. Let's see how all this acts in real life and compare the quality of photos to the results displayed by the competitive Motorola Z10 handset. The latter has a comparable camera, for the first time ever in a Motorola product.

Shooting, comparison to Motorola Z10

First we bring you a few samples of photos taken with Nokia N78 at maximum quality settings, everything set to Auto. As seen from the samples, the device offers a good quality of images, only yielding to a few competitive products.

Let's compare the quality of shots taken in a variety of environments:

Маcrо:

SMAPE's opinion

The camera unit used in Nokia N78 offers a fair photo quality, yet obviously inferior to most 5 Mp models like N82. Competitive models like Motorola Z10 seem to beat the N78 camera in no visible way, only slightly excelling it in a few aspects while doing a bit worse in other.

The majority of the target audience will be satisfied with the powers offered by the camera; combined with the high comfort and quality of implementation of the rest of the functions, Nokia N78 makes on of the most balanced devices in the company's portfolio and on the whole market in general. The beginning price of 350 euros seems to be quite an adequate assessment, once it goes down the owners of N73 may also get interested in taking it to replace their old phones. The common points for the two include the compact size and the excellent GPS functionality, and also an fair quality camera.

Author: Anton Spiridonov, editor@smape.com

SMAPE.com

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