The thought of Motorola’s first ever ROKR music blower, the E1, still sends shivers down the spine. This iPod white candybar roped in Apple to provide the iTunes music chops but a 100 song limit and tired rehashed design earned it a one-way ticket to the nearest landfill. Three years on and still undeterred Moto is back with its second ROKR incarnation, the E8, and signs are it’s learnt from its mistakes.
The new ROKR on the block is clearly a universe away from the E1 aberration, sporting a unique slick none more black glossy veneer. It also tightly constructed, lightweight and pleasingly trim, although it does sport broad Nokia 95-esque shoulders.
The E8 most striking feature is the ‘ModeShift’ keypad layout and touch-sensitive half moon scroll bar for speedily sifting through your sizeable music library. Moto has adopted the de rigueur shifting context specific keypad recently showcased on the likes of the Samsung Soul U900 and LG KF600. The canny keypad morphs to suit what feature you’re using – fire up the music player or camera for example and their specific controls magically appear.
Surprisingly, the keypad isn’t ticklish but slightly mechanised emitting a tingly haptic pulse to signal your selection. Tiny nipples also help to guide your fingers but we were pleasantly surprised how well the whole arrangement played out.
An integrated 3.5mm headphone socket and 2GB internal storage (you can ramp memory a further 8GB via the micro SD) shows the E8 means business on the music front. The player itself has a 12 mode equaliser (Bhangra anyone?) and a bass boost feature to adapt or beef up the audio and its sounds lively through the supplied headphones.
Unfortunately, listless EDGE download speeds and a dim-witted two-megapixel means the E8 is merely a good phone instead of a great one.
Verdict
It possesses striking looks and all the right music moves but the E8 is handicapped by its other pedestrian features.
Best features
Striking design
Integrated 3.5mm headphone jack
Nicely feature music player
Not so good
Poor camera
Slow EDGE download speeds
Closest rivals
Sony Ericsson W890
It may be the slimmest Walkman music phone at 10mm but there’s still room for a 3.2 megapixel snapper and turbo HSDPA download speeds.
Samsung F400
Undoubtedly Samsung’s finest music blower yet, sporting a large powerful sliding speaker and integrated 3.5mm headphone jack for the serious mobile muso.
Nokia N95
A sliding dedicated music controls and built-in 3.5mm headphone socket is just a few of this Symbian smartphone’s many stellar talents.
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