Sindre Lia gets to grips - or is that ears - with the ROKR E1, Motorola's first proper music phone and the world's very first iTunes-enabled handset; can it live up to the hype?
Review summary of the Motorola ROKR E1:
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 With a distinctly mediocre screen and camera, the Motorola ROKR E1’s claim to fame is its iTunes support - yet it only stores 100 songs at a time and offers a bundled headset which is outperformed by its dual 3D stereo speakers. A user friendly menu system, extensive battery life and great keypad stand to counter these downsides, but the overall impression is nevertheless one of mediocrity. Still, although the handset cannot match the feature set of higher-end music phones, its lower price tag enables prospective buyers to purchase new earphones to get an overall experience close to the Sony Ericsson W550 in the mid-range. Release: September 2005. Price: $1.
Pros: Great keypad design and battery life; iTunes functionality
Cons: Mediocre screen; lousy earphones
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Full Motorola ROKR E1 Review:
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In a move to claim a spot in the recently emerged music phone market, the Motorola ROKR E1 features an iTunes branded music player, also sporting features such as a 0.3 MP camera and Bluetooth. Granted, its feature set is no match for
the Sony Ericsson W800i über-phone - but it just might be an adversary for the lesser-featured Sony Ericsson W550, currently hitting shelves alongside the ROKR E1 in Europe.
Sporting a solid and compact candybar casing, the Motorola ROKR E1 feels a tad heavy despite only weighing 107 g and measuring 108 x 46 x 20.5 mm. Apart from having a clean look, the ROKR E1 comes with a very comfortable keypad design which offers excellent interaction for the purpose of text input. Unfortunately, however, the 5-way navigation joystick's well-rounded edges make it just a little too smooth and slippery.
The ROKR E1 features a 262K colour screen with a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels, offering up to 8 lines of text when reading messages or WAP pages. Although fully adequate when viewed at a 90 degree angle, even minor vertical straying from this ideal led to colour distortion and loss of contrast, uncomfortably hampering viewing. Similarly mediocre is the 0.3 MP camera of the handset, with its performance being on par with that of comparable cameras in handsets from competing makers.
The most important feature of the Motorola ROKR E1 is undoubtly the included iTunes branded music player, accompanied by iTunes synchronisation software. The latter is quickly installed on the computer, and provides easy access and transfer of audio files to the mobile phone via a bundled USB cable, as well as the opportunity of buying songs from the iTunes Music Store. A 512 MB microSD card is also bundled with the ROKR E1, yet iTunes only allows for a maximum of 100 songs to be transferred to the handset. Motorola's own music player, on the other hand, lets users create unlimited playlists. Unfortunately, both applications lack equalizers, but as the iTunes music player offers a more user-friendly interface, it's the preferred music player on the ROKR E1 despite exhibiting sluggish behaviour when browsing by Artist, Album or Song.
Sound-wise, the ROKR E1's stereo 3D surround speakers definitely performed better than its bundled earphones, which not only were poorly designed but also produced an entirely mediocre output. The ability to use the earphones as a handsfree set chalks up a bonus point - yet overall, we're not satisfied with the out-of-the-box experience for a music phone. Using the ROKR E1 with better earphones improved the sound experience significantly, although output generally struggles with poor loudness and rather distinct treble.
With regard to phone-related features, the European version of the Motorola ROKR E1 supports 900/1800/1900 MHz GSM networks where the the North American chalks up 850/1800/1900 MHz; GPRS support is common for both. Moreover, the ROKR E1 offers a phonebook capable of storing 1000 entries, SMS, MMS and e-mail support as well as polyphonic and MP3 ringtones, a WAP 2.0 browser and voice dialling. Unfortunately, EDGE support and Infrared have been left out, but at least Bluetooth is present for short-range connectivity.
Reception for the Motorola ROKR E1 proved to be excellent, while voice quality was good. The battery delivered approximately 4 hours of talktime and 6 days of standby time as compared to the claimed 9 hours and 9 days, respectively. We found the battery to last approximately 12 hours when using the iTunes music player continuously.
Availability
The Motorola ROKR E1 is at the time of writing available in Europe and North America, selling for approximately €300 EUR and $250 USD, respectively.
Price and availability
The Motorola ROKR E1 will start selling for Free to $270 ((Cingular)) in September 2005.
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