| Motorola ROKR E8 |
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 If you're looking for a good music phone on T-Mobile, check out the Nokia 5310 Xpress Music phone, which was slim and responsive with great dedicated music keys, instead of the Motorola ROKR E8, which has no keys at all. There wasn't much to like about this phone. The menus were a jumbled mess; the music player was hurt by the strange scroll wheel design and slow hardware; and, to be frank, the touch-panel-that-feels-like-buttons kind of creeped us out. This is a gimmicky phone, and though we have nothing but compliments for the great call quality and loads of onboard storage, the overall experience isn't worth putting up with. Plus, the phone will retail at launch for $200, the price of an iPhone, when better music phones can be had on T-Mobile for much less. Release: July 2008. Price: $200.
Pros: Unique design for true button-haters. Great call quality. Good battery life. Lots of onboard memory.
Cons: Touch instead of buttons doesn't make this phone better. Poor menu design. Strange scroll 'crescent.' Unresponsive controls hamper music experience.
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| Sony Ericsson W760 |
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 If the Sony Ericsson W580i was a solid music phone (it was), the Sony Ericsson W760 is a solid 3G phone all around. The great music player hasn't gotten any worse with age, though we'd like it to get a little better. The best part is how much the W760 benefits from U.S. 3G access. Calls sounded great on AT&T's HSDPA network, and Web browsing speeds were very good. Even better was the tethered modem support, a nice surprise for a phone that seems to be all about music. The PC Suite let us synchronize our Outlook contacts and calendar, which was another nice surprise, and they kept coming. Don't expect much from the gaming capabilities and you won't be disappointed. Don’t expect much from the camera and you'll be pleased. Navigation was a miss, more of a bonus than a worthwhile feature, but there was such a nice mix of near-hits and Bulls-eyes that the phone comes out a winner in the end. Release: June 2008. Price: $100.
Pros: Fast network speeds. Solid music player. Great call quality. Good PC sync capabilities. Good Web browser.
Cons: No IM for messaging, nor IMAP for Gmail. Music app could use some polish. Media Manager needs improvement. Music phones are better with 3.5mm headphone jack.
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| Neonode N2 |
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 Even Neonode was surprised that we had heard of them, but we've been following this tiny touch screen phone since it was announced last year. It doesn't use normal touch sensors, instead it relies on an infra-red grid to map where you've touched it. In practice, this worked fine, though it wasn't perfectly responsive. Also, Neonode expects users to control much of the phone through gestures, but the screen was a bit cramped to combine gestures and touch icons. Also, screen quality was a bit disappointing, and the screen is far too small to be useful as anything but a novelty device. Play music? Sure, why not. Messaging and browsing? No chance. Release: June 2007.
Pros: Very small. Interesting, gesture-based touch input. Open software model.
Cons: Too small to be useful, definitely not an iPhone competitor.
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SLIGHT |
Moderate |
Palpable |
Extreme |
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