The Motorola E8 handset. (JP/Zatni Arbi)
In the past, I didn't think much of music phones. I mean, if I was serious about storing hundreds or thousands of songs and listening to them when away from my collection of CDs, why not just buy an iPod?
That was until one evening, when I found myself aboard a bus, waiting for the other people in my traveling group to come back from their final shopping round. It was too dark to read and too cold to get off and wander around on my own. The driver didn't speak English, except for a few phrases. Feeling bored, I took out my BlackBerry Curve and played the only two songs that I had copied into it.
But you can imagine how it felt to listen to two songs over and over. Soon the driver asked me, "Do you have other songs?". An iPod -- or any MP3 player -- with a pair of decent speakers would have been nicer.
However, I know a lot of people who have lost their iPods, because these music devices are not as important as their cell phones. You would notice it immediately if you didn't have your cell phone with you; you'd start looking for it until you found it. On the other hand, if you left your iPod behind in the pocket of an airline seat, you may not realize it for a couple of days.
So, there's a good point to having some extra storage to store music files in your cell phone. At the very least, you'll have your music when you are stranded on a bus on a cold, early spring evening.
That was how my view of music cell phones changed. Now I understand why people raved about the Nokia N91 -- the first and only cell phone with a revolving hard disk. Today, there are more models to choose from: Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and others.
Motorola calls its line of serious music phones ROKR. I'd consider them serious, because in addition to a lot of memory space, they also produce great audio and have the necessary tools to manage a music collection. There are features such as Playlists that help you put your favorite songs in a playback list. You can create a number of playlists and also determine which songs to be played to match a particular mood.
The first ROKR came out around three years ago.
"After ROKR E1, we had a series of other ROKRs, including E2 and E6," said Robert van Tilburg, Corporate Country Manager of Motorola Indonesia, during an interview at his company's new office in Jakarta.
The latest ROKR, which has just been launched, is the E8. It has more interesting technical features than just a music player.
But, first, here are its specifications at a glance. The E8 is a quad-band cell phone that support GPRS and Edge. The camera is a 2.0 megapixel, but there's no flash to help you capture images and videos in the dark. The display is a 2.0-inch, landscaped QVGA screen with 262 K colors. More importantly, like all new handsets from Motorola, this model also comes with CrystalTalk feature, which helps voice communication in a very noisy environment.
A music phone will not be complete without an equalizer. The E8 has an on-board equalizer with several preset choices such as Classical, Country, Dance, Pop and even Vocal Boost.
A 3.5 mm jack is available on top of the handset, so a pair of wired headphones or speakers can be used to listen to the music. If used with Motorola EQ5 or EQ7 speakers, there is speakerphone functionality, too.
The internal memory is 2 GB, which can store up to 1,500 songs grouped in albums. To have a higher capacity, a 2 GB microSD card can be added.
The buttons on the keypad are actually protruding specks with lighted labels. The labels are readable even in a bright environment. They will darken after a few seconds of inactivity. A feature called Haptics provides feedback to your finger tips, letting you know you have pressed the button.
The most striking new feature is perhaps the ModeShift. The cell phone's functions are grouped into three modes -- talk, music and imaging. In the talk mode, the cell phone keypad is lit. When you press the Music button, the number keypad becomes hidden, then you only have the Reverse, Fast Forward, Play and Pause buttons on the keypad area.
Press the Talk button on the right, and the number keypad returns. In the imaging mode, there are only the buttons related to picture and video-taking.
Another interesting new feature is the Fast Scroll navigation wheel that surrounds the round five-way navigation button. Robert calls it the "Omega Wheel", because it is shaped like the Greek Omega character. To scroll down a list, for example, you just slide your finger over the sensor in the Omega Wheel. During a music playback, you can move back and forth by sliding your finger, too.
Adjusting the volume is done with two hardware buttons on the left side.
Another nice feature is the Song ID. If you hear a new song that you like and you don't have any idea who the singer is or what the title is, you can activate this feature. The cell phone will connect via GPRS to a dedicated website, and in a few seconds it will recognize the song and provide you with the information.
The audio production is quite good, especially when the 3D Stereo is set a bit higher to create a wider spatial sound. A pair of portable speakers will increase the audio enjoyment.
The materials used in ROKR E8 is as good as in all of Motorola's high-end products and the workmanship is, as usual, impeccable.
The ROKR E8 is a decent music phone. Too bad it's not a 3G phone, and it doesn't come with Wi-Fi connectivity. The ModeShift and the Omega Wheel will take some time to get used to, especially if you're not familiar with iPod, but they certainly give this model an attractive faceplate.
First unveiled during Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this year, the E8 was included in Popular Science's "Best of What's New". Whether it will be a smash hit on the market still remains to be seen.
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