Introduction
ROKR… the common name for Motorola’s musical handsets. We had a RAZR, a PEBL and who knows what else, and now we have a rocker. Although the strange four-letter word might mean something else, but this is what popped into my mind. If I’d want to be really funny now I’d say that I’m waiting for Motorola PUNKR/DANCR/DOZR phones, but to tell the truth I’m waiting much more for the American manufacturer to launch a handset that really impresses us too.
It might be no exaggeration to say that the manufacturer has been trying to sell its handsets with design for a long time now. They have some reason for that as they had an outraging success with RAZR, although that too was rather good-looking than feature-filled or fast. But this has been many years ago, the market has changed, nowadays much more is required. But Motorola has started to get this only now, and the result of this practically manifests in the rather good E9 and the attractive Z10 that has a developed interior too. Handsets made before these (like the really outdated E6) have all been made by the old philosophy. And now I have their latest musical model in my hands, and this time I can really say that they have been working on it, I could say it’s innovative. Unfortunately it’s still not the best, but let’s not be so hasty…
We have received the handset from Motorola. Unfortunately I got no accessories with it, so I can’t write about the qualities of these, although I would have liked to test the headset.
Exterior
Although judging design is still a subjective thing, it’s still sure that I like E8 very, very much. The most important reason for this probably is that the handset has a very unique look, we haven’t really seen anything like this before. Probably this has been the thing that made my friends have very different opinions, but on the whole there were more who have liked the design. Its physical parameters are not very tempting based on the specs (its size is 115 x 53 x 10.6 mm and it weighs exactly 100 grams), but it still fits perfectly in the palm, or to put it this way: it’s a real pleasure to hold it in hand. The great materials used are an important factor in this, the back is made of metal and it’s covered in silky rubber, we have high-quality plastics on the front and the sides so it’s very good. The joints, however, are not very precise, but the real problem is on the back: the detachable part comes off quite easily and even more there is a visible gap over here.
The bottom and top parts are slant, when put on a desk there is an angle of 75 degrees instead of 90. The handset is completely black, but there are all kinds of circuits visible on the front when in sunlight. On the top we can see the speaker disguised as a Motorola logo and the display seems to surround it, but no, it’s a couple of millimeters below. It’s not very big, it has a diagonal of 2”, its resolution is 320 x 240 pixels, but image quality and readability in sunlight is great. We can see the keypad below, which has a couple of surprises. On one hands there is an almost full circle in the top middle part, which is in fact a touch-sensitive ring, just like the iPod TouchWheel. Of course it’s far from being as effective as Apple’s, and Motorola probably knows this as they have also inserted a five-way navigation pad – and they did this right, I’ve been using that. The buttons are placed around the small ring, but the labels are visible only if the backlight is turned on. Even more, these area not separate keys, as the more important ones are labeled with small dots, but otherwise the whole surface is pressure-sensitive – no, it’s not touch-sensitive, we have to press the plastic surface a bit in order to make things work, the phone gives shake feedback for this. This is a rather good solution, I have never mispressed during the test period, which is a big thing. The backlight looks awesome; it’s orange in sunlight, white in darkness, and even more, only those buttons are lit which are currently in use, so for example the numeric keypad remains dark in the menu. There are musical buttons too, which are visible only when we launch the music player and there are three buttons that appear when reviewing pictures. Zooming is evidently the most useful of these.
Two types of keypads – the currently used keys are lit
There is nothing interesting on the back. On top we can see the tiny camera and there is an even smaller label telling us that the handset has a 2 megapixel image sensor. There is a Motorola logo in the center with two icons underneath and on the bottom there is a red stripe which is in fact the handsfree speaker. The microSD slot is near the battery, but unfortunately we have to take the power source out in order to change the card.
On the top we can find the funniest part, the 3.5 mm jack output, which rises like a chimney. Many have said that the phone looks like a flat bottle and the headset’s connector is where you have to drink. I also think that there is some resemblance. By the way the connector is protected by a rubber cover, which keeps falling of, so it’s not really good. In the top left corner we can see the neckband’s hook and the volume control keys and the camera’s exposure key (which we won’t be using at all) below it.
On the bottom there is only an “engraved” ROKR label, on the right there is the microUSB connector and the power button/keypad lock slider. I would like to say it again how much I like these kinds of solutions: I just push the slide and everything’s locked, there’s no menu-asterisk or long-pressed hash mark. I’d like all phones to be like this.
Menu, software
E8 is a Linux-based phone, but the users won’t see anything of this, as it is a closed system, so the handset is no smartphone. The main menu adapts to the landscape display and the navigation ring, which means that it’s a vertical list. All menu items have an icon, which would look good, but it’s darn slow, so if we step more than one the animation becomes very choppy and it might happen that the phone starts thinking about nothing and it these cases the icon won’t even appear. The wheel works quite lame, I had a feeling that the number of menu points that appear is completely random, but it’s probably related to the speed we move our finger at. It’s visible from the menu labels that it’s a musical phone, let’s see them: Music, Random, Radio, SongID, Multimedia, Connections, Messages, Web access, Office tools, Settings. There is one preset theme, but we can download new ones.
The second menu item is of course shuffle mode, so choosing this launches music playback with random track order. I think it was unnecessary to include a separate menu for SongID, the call log could have been in its place for example, which is shockingly placed in the office tools - well, we really have to be in the office in order to take a look at our missed calls, but seriously… The multimedia includes a feature called media search, which has the same function as the gallery on Nokia phones, so this is the picture browser too. Below this we can find the games, the camera, the video camera and the sound recorder, which can record until there is free memory.
The office tools includes everything that didn’t fit elsewhere, but the name is tricky, as I think neither the previously mentioned call log nor the calendar/alarm clock/world clock/file manager quartet belong here, but this is what we have. Besides these we can find the synchronization, the download manager, the calculator, the task list and the notepad. There are two games on the phone: Sudoku and Tetris. What is missing: stopwatch, countdown timer, unit- and currency converter. This is quite lame in 2008.
Phone calls, basic functions, data transfer
I had no problems with sound quality during phone calls; it was all right both on the normal speaker and the handsfree loudspeaker too. There are no profiles and the handset can’t ring and vibrate at the same time. The phonebook, however, is really advanced: its capacity is unknown, but some sources say it can store 15.000 entries and there are even lots of extra fields, we can store pictures too. In the call log we can view the dialed/received/missed calls separately or mixed and there is a tab with the most frequently dialed numbers. The handset stores the last 50 of each kind of entry.
There are basically no problems with messaging, E8 supports multimedia messages and emails too, the mail client support authenticated IMAP servers too. It’s a great thing that the new ROKR has an HTML browser, but the phone with a 2” display might not be the ideal choice for web browsing. The calendar is okay, we have month/week/day views and we can set lots of parameters for the events.
The handset doesn’t support third generation mobile networks, so we can only use EDGE and GPRS for data transfer. WiFi is also missing, but the Bluetooth module supports the stereo profile too (A2DP). We can use the microUSB 2.0 connector for wired connection and the handset has a quad-band GSM module (850/900/1800/1900 MHz).
Multimedia
The camera has a resolution of 2 megapixels, it has fixed focus, which is a good hint about E8 not being the photographers’ choice. When taking pictures we have to hold the phone as if we were making a call, as this is ho we get a landscape picture – this is why we might not use the exposure key on the side, although we can take pictures with the phone in our palm as the camera is high enough, so we won’t cover it with our hand. The highest available resolution for pictures is 1600 x 1200 and 144 x 176 pixels for videos. There aren’t many settings, we practically can’t tamper with anything else than resolution and JPEG compression; as a bonus we have a self-timer, image sequencing (8 pictures max) and a couple of effects.
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Image quality is poor: noise level is high, dynamics range barely exists and chromatic aberration is so powerful that I have never seen before at a cell phone. The only positive thing is that we can take quite good pictures in poor lighting conditions (in interior spaces), but the camera is still very weak.
The size of the internal memory is 2 GB, but we can store our music on the memory card too. The music player can be launched from the menu and with the dedicated music keys too, it finds the tracks on the internal memory and the memory card without problems, independently of which folder do we store them in, which is great. We can sort tracks, based on their ID3 tags, by artist, album, genre and composer, we can get a list of all tracks and we can use playlists too. Album covers are displayed, even if in a small size and we can see all important information, which is also great. It can run in the background, it can be embedded in the standby screen where we can access all major functions.
We should be able to seek the tracks with the wheel, but unfortunately the designers have messed up the intervals a bit, we jump thirty seconds in the track even at the slightest move, which is not good at all. Besides this the software part is okay, we can enable shuffle and repeat modes, there is an equalizer (although we can’t create custom presets), bass boost (has three power levels) and 3D stereo effect. Volume can be set in 20 steps, but the problem is that the volume control keys don’t function when the keypad is locked, although it would be quite hard to press them accidentally, so I don’t really understand this. There is no problem with sound quality. As there was no headset I have used a Sennheiser MX50 and the stock iPod headset, I have felt the quality a bit inferior to that of the iPod with both of them, but the difference is so small that it’s possible that it doesn’t even exist. The handsfree speaker, however, is not so great unfortunately. We have an FM radio without any extras, but it works.
Battery, summary
The battery has a capacity of 970 mAh and it’s changeable. Without any music playback it kept E8 online for two and a half days, but I must add that I have been talking quite a lot. I presume that if one listens to lots of music it has to be charged daily, which is not ideal.
Summary: I really don’t know what to think about the new ROKR. On one hand it’s a very good-looking handset, even I would accept it if I would only consider the design and the quality, although I rarely say such a thing about a handset I review. The software, however, is not the best, it’s slow, it’s illogical in some places, it’s not very spectacular, but at the same time I can see that they have been working a lot on it, but I’m not sure that the end users will notice this (since they will only observe the annoying flaws), but I have been happy about it. On the music part it’s not perfect either, but it can be used for this too. We get all this for about €190 EUR, unlocked version. If someone prefers the brand or would like a really unique, a bit prominent and high-tech musical phone than it might be the good choice. I still say that others should choose something else.
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| Motorola ROKR E8 |
Bocha
Translated by Szaszati
The handset has been provided by Motorola, thanks!
Specifications
| Motorola ROKR E8 | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM | |
| Size | 115 x 53 x 10.6 mm | |
| Weight | 100 grams | |
| Available colors | Dark Navy, Platinum | |
| Display | ||
| Display diagonal | 2” | |
| Display resolution | 240 x 320 pixels | |
| Display type | TFT | |
| Number of colors | 262.000 | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | 15.000 (?) entries | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | n.a. / 300 KB | |
| Memory expandability | microSD | |
| data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | 850/900/1800/1900 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | Class 12 / Class 12 | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | none / none | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | none / 2.0 (A2DP too) | |
| WiFi | none | |
| USB | 2.0 (microUSB) | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | none / none | |
| GPS receiver | none | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | none | |
| Vibra function | present | |
| Built-in handsfree | present | |
| Voice dialing / voice commands | none / none | |
| Sound recorder | present (unlimited length) | |
| Alarm clock | present, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | iTAP | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | Linux-based Motorola | |
| WAP / HTML browser | 2.0 / present | |
| E-mail client | present (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated) | |
| Java | present, MIDP 2.0 | |
| Games | 2 | |
| Currency converter | none | |
| Extra software | SongID | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | 2 megapixels, fixed focus | |
| Secondary camera | none | |
| Video recording | present (176 x 144 pixels) | |
| Music player | present, can run in background | |
| Equalizer | present, predefined presets | |
| FM radio | present | |
| Battery | ||
| Main battery | 970 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Standby time | 300 hours | |
| Talk time | 5 hours | |
| Other | ||
| Unique keypad, touch-sensitive scrolling wheel, 3.5 mm jack output | ||
