Motorola Rokr E8 – Review

Although the walkman handset of Sony Ericsson might be something as the household name but when it comes to music phones they usually lack the essential and standard headphone socket or even the support for most of the music formats. Therefore it would not be very difficult for any other company to take the lead. The Rokr E8 from Motorola is inclined simply and purely as music phone and the phone for those style conscious people. The cell phone is available free of cost just for a monthly contract with Orange and O2.

Design

When switched off you will feel that the Rokr E8 is simply a black large slab. The cell phone is designed wit the haptic keypad which is press sensitive but it does not mean that they are on the screen. It imitates the physical keypad perfectly and makes speed typing pretty easy. You would be surprised to see the 3.5mm headphone socket which means that any regular headphones that you have would work just fine. There is however no major changes as the MicroSD slot is just besides the SIM slot in the handset which is excellent for aesthetics but those who keep swapping cards will be disappointed.

Features

The 2 megapixel camera can be found at the back of the handset which however does not include a flash. Inside the cell phone you will find an impressive 2GB of onboard memory and Motorola also lets you expand the memory using the MicroSD with nearly 4GB of memory capacity. Much better feature is that both these units of memory are automatically shared which means that the music that is stored on the memory of the phone is shared with that stored on y our MicroSD in the main music library. This music library is easily accessible through the dedicated music key.

The Motorola Rokr E8 is compatible with most of the music formats that include WAV, WMA, AAC and MP3. Music that is stored can be played through the headphones or even wirelessly through the stereo A2DP Bluetooth. As it is not a 3G phone you will find it a bit difficult dealing with the web however you can alternatively have Opera Mini installed.

Performance

If you would be using the Rokr E8 then it would require some getting used to generally because if you are using Motorola after using Sony Ericsson or Nokia handset. This gets much simple after a few weeks of adjustment. There is however a small amount of lag when using the navigation menus as you might find delays during menu selections and the menu scrolling in also a bit slower during fast browsing. However, the touch sensitive wheel or scroll key makes it very easy to browse long list. Typing through the touch sensitive keypad is in fact very fluid that you might expect and would have a great experience. You would surely praise audio quality gained through music player of Motorola Rokr E8 and the included high quality 3.5mm headphone socket would also give you outstanding performance.

source : http://www.mad4mobilephones.com/

T-Mobile Officially Launches Motorola ROKR E8

One of the coolest phones from this January's Consumer Electronics Show, the Motorola ROKR E8 is a bar-style phone with a twist: The phone's keypad changes depending on whether it's in phone, music, or camera mode, displaying appropriate keys for the application in use. It's not an LCD touch screen like the iPhone's; rather, it's a less-expensive, more durable technology that lights up different layers under the phone's glass surface.

The E8 is Motorola 's most buzzed-about release in months, a flagship device that's supposed to raise the profile of the world's number-three cell phone maker. Like most recent, prominent Motorola phones, it's more about design than about features. The E8 is a 4.5-by-2.1-by-0.4-inch black slab, topped by a sharp 2-inch, 320-by-240 screen. Stand it on its end, and it may remind you of the monolith from the classic sci-fi movie "2001."

The keypad is dominated by a touch-sensitive scroll 'arc' that works like a jog dial on an old VCR—the farther you drag your finger along it, the faster you scroll. Below it, the keys use haptic force-feedback technology to convince you that you're actually pressing keys when you're just touching images on glass.

The E8 offers a strong, midrange feature set. It has 2GB of internal memory and a microSD memory card slot that carries up to 8GB cards; the phone comes with a 1GB card to get you started. It syncs via a standard microUSB cable with Windows Media Player 11 on PCs, playing protected or unprotected WMA, but also AAC, AAC+, MP3, WAV, and RealAudio files. You can listen to your music through the single speaker on the back, or through wired or Bluetooth headphones. The phone also has a 2-megapixel camera, an FM radio, a Web browser, and CrystalTalk, Motorola's noise-reduction technology. The phone creates virtual surround-sound effects with most headphones, Motorola said.

However, the E8 is missing one key feature for a new, flagship phone: 3G. The E8 only supports EDGE, which transfers data at around 100-120 kbps. The 3G networks run by Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and now T-Mobile are much faster. T-Mobile doesn't have media services that take advantage of 3G, but that's not a big minus for T-Mobile subscribers right now; it may be in the future.

The ROKR E8 music phone is going on sale with T-Mobile on July 7 for $199.99 with a two-year service plan.

source : http://www.pcmag.com/