By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.net
MOTOROLA is keen on making impressions last when designing their phones. This started a couple years ago when they introduced the ROKR, RAZR series and SLVER series.
Then they started having partnerships with several audio hardware manufacturers to complement their strategy in the mobile phone business. Motorola focused so much on design that the accessories had to look as good as the phones. That’s not a surprise considering that in a cutthroat business like the mobile phone-music player hybrid manufacturing, the one with the most fashionable design wins.
The MotoROKR series maybe the brand’s most prolific model as it caters to music enthusiasts. It competes directly with Sony Ericsson’s Walkman series and the Nokia N series. The latest in the ROKR series is the E8 and is a huge departure from the previous designs, particularly the E6 and Z6 models. This time, Motorola went back to the drawing board to create an entirely new ROKR, in the hopes of reigniting the enthusiasm for their music phones.
At first glance, one might think the MotoROKR E8 is a new brand; none of the basic designs of even Motorola’s previous generation of “brick” mobile phones were integrated into the E8, save for the familiar “M” logo of the company. In fact, the phone doesn’t look like a phone when it’s turned off or when it is in idle mode. It is totally black and the front part is covered in tempered glass. The sides are in navy blue chrome finish while the back is rubberized dark blue aluminum. It is quite visible even with such a dark color scheme because it is wider than most phones at 115 millimeters though it is thinner at 10.6 mm. Perhaps because of the use of tempered glass and the chrome finish, the unit is noticeably heavier at approximately 100 grams. It feels solid to the touch and doesn’t seem to have any moving parts inside.
FastScroll and ModeShift
An obvious design feature of the MotoROKR E8 is the semi-spherical navigator ring in the middle of the unit, as well as little nubs, like the ones used in Braille documents, lined up across its lower half. These nubs and the middle navigator (what Motorola calls FastScroll Navigator) actually hide all of the touch-sensitive controls of the phone, which appear as backlit letters and numbers.
Another feature is the ModeShift, which is just shifting the function of the phone. In active mode, the user can do just about anything that can be done on a mobile phone, such as write text or multimedia messages, view files, play mobile phone games, among other things. But with a press of a button (the lit music note on the left side), the phone becomes a handheld music player, which shows only the basic music functions (play, pause, next/previous song, shuffle and loop). The other button functions become invisible and will become visible again when the Back button is pressed.
But even with a supposed touch-sensitive keypad, a firm press is required on each of the buttons and only a miniscule vibration indicates that a successful press was made. This is a far cry from the tactile feel of pressing real buttons and it does require quite a learning curve. But once users get past the vibration indicator instead of the tactile feel, it becomes as easy as using an ordinary phone.
Music function
And because it is a music phone, it should work as well or even better than its competitors in the same market. When the ModeShift transforms the E8’s controls from phone to music player the screen’s interface is also transformed and actually looks similar to the Apple iPod’s iTunes user interface. It would be most certain that anyone who owns an E8 will have already owned an iPod so using the E8’s music controls will be easy.
As expected, the sound is superb when using its headset and what makes it better is that it uses a 3.5 mm standard stereo jack allowing for a variety of stereo headsets, including those with noise-canceling functions, to be plugged in. Even when using the loudspeaker the MotoROKR E8’s sound quality is not diminished. But because the speaker is a small slit it cannot go as loud as a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone, like the W910i, which uses larger speaker drivers. Nevertheless, the E8 speakers are powerful enough to be heard inside small spaces, such as cars. It is also good enough when using for phone calls (even the microphone can pick up the user’s voice, provided it is situated directly in front).
At 2 Gigabytes internal memory, the MotoROKR E8 can save an average of 1,000 songs in MP3 format. But it can triple its capacity by installing a 4 Gb microSD memory card. The bad part here is that the card has to be installed inside the unit and even with the card slot being placed just above the battery, the battery itself has to be removed from its compartment just to insert the small microSD card. Nevertheless, the advantage of having a memory card inside the cover of the phone is that it has less chance of being accidentally removed.
Camera and other functions
Of course, even as a music phone, the MotoROKR E8 features a 2-megabyte digital camera at the back, which takes basic but respectable photos. Incidentally, it doesn’t have a flash but this may be because of the emphasis on this model’s music player functions. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to put in an extra flash.
It also has an FM radio tuner but it has to be activated using a headset, which serves as its antenna. On the other hand, few actually ever use their phones’ FM tuner if they already have loads of MP3s in their phones.
The E8 also sports an A2DP Bluetooth connectivity that allows it to connect to other Bluetooth devices, including headsets with stereo control functions. It can also transmit sound to Bluetooth loudspeakers and transfer various files also via Bluetooth wireless technology.
Cellular connectivity is through its quad-band GPRS/EDGE capability. Although it doesn’t have WiFi, it can still access the Internet via cellular networks. The company claims that it supports full HTML websites but the browser forcibly tries to fit all of the content in a small screen, which causes some sites to look tight. The sites are still functional but scrolling down large webpages can be daunting.
Overall, the MotoROKR E8 is a sudden but welcome change in the ROKR phone family. Its revolutionary touch-screen keypad function is a potential hot seller especially with users who are bored with the tactile feel of separate keys. It does require some getting used to but a little practice will do just the trick. Sound is good but not as great as the competing models from Sony Ericsson. Another good thing with the MotoROKR is its somewhat longer battery life, which can last up to two days without charging and while using its music functions.
