(+22 rating, 28 votes)
Loading ...You certainly can’t accuse Motorola of shying away from a challenge: at their CES 2008 launch of the ROKR E8 music phone, their president of mobile devices, Stu Reed, defiantly told reporters that “we’re dispelling the myth that mobile phones with music features are inferior to stand-alone audio devices.” Key to their assault on the standalone PMP market is ModeShift, a system whereby different keys on the handset light up based on which app is being used. So, in cellphone mode the numeric keypad is illuminated, but switch to the PMP and those keys darken to be replaced by play/pause and track skip controls.
Since there are no physical keys, Motorola has loaded haptic feedback onto the ROKR E8; it vibrates whenever a virtual button is pressed. The E8 also marks the debut of their FastScroll navigation wheel, which should be recognisable to classic iPod owners.
Onboard memory is 2GB and that can be expanded with microSD cards up to 4GB in size, and Windows Media Player 11 compatibility means dragging music across via the USB 2.0 connection should be less than troublesome (unless you own a Mac, of course). Bluetooth 2.0 A2DP and a standard 3.5mm stereo socket should cover all your earphone options . The rest of the specs aren’t exactly earth-shattering: 2-inch landscape QVGA display, quad-band GPRS/EDGE and Motorola’s CrystalTalk voice call DSP add up to an average, though well made and solid-feeling handset.
Does the E8 live up to Stu Reed’s lofty ambitions? Well, the undoubted king of cellphone/PMP hybrids is the iPhone, and while the ROKR’s haptic feedback is a welcome addition, the rest of the spec sheet doesn’t really mount too much of an assault. Nonetheless, ModeShift is an interesting technology and, with cellphones and mobile devices growing ever more complicated, it’ll be interesting to see how Motorola develops it.
The ROKR E8 should be available in the US in Q1 2008; price is yet to be announced.
