Let’s do a quick revisit. Back in February, Motorola announced the ROKR E8, their flagship music phone and I was able to get a quick glance over dinner. Now that it’s out and after going a few days with the ROKR E8, I have a few insight’s on Motorola’s latest music phone. It’s a big step from the ROKR E2 – as the new phone incorporates their ModeShift technology that relies heavily upon the touch sensitive virtual keypad that is case sensitive.

My feedback is that in the few days I’ve used the phone I still can’t get through the learning curve of getting used to this type of input method: I still can’t quite understand why they didn’t use the traditional keypad input method. Or maybe I just have really huge fingers. But then again, it isn’t like they’re using a touch screen. I sincerely believe that it’s hard to put a middle ground between a pure touch screen device and a keypad. Sure, there are devices that have both input methods, but to have keypad hardware that acts like a touch screen isn’t too promising. Although it looks cool for all intents and purposes (yeah it really does!), why not just go for the tactile feedback approach of a good keypad?

Luckily, the ROKR E8 doesn’t take the concept all the way, and incorporates some sort of tactile feedback, but with some of the keys cramped together closely, it presents some problems with getting the right thing you want on screen.

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If you ask me, if they want a complete redesign, Motorola Mobile Division should change their name. I mean, why not? They won’t be having any responsibilities towards the mother company. And guess what? Everyone will know that they are Motorola anyway. It may be all marketing. It may be hype, but an identity change is something Motorola needs to do to bring home the notion that they want a fresh start with already great successes in the market. They have good products – the ROKR logo has been tweaked to spell a serious music lifestyle niche for instance, and Moto needs to make an even bigger impact if they want to get back in the game.

Post from: Cellphone9

I was able to handle the Motorola ROKR E8, Motorola’s third iteration of the ROKR series. The design and feature highlights include a glass surface with a “virtual” keypad, the new Song ID feature, and the patented FastScroll navigation.

The ROKR brand is being positioned as a “MP3 player first – phone second” device. Motorola is really pushing the ROKR brand as you can see from the new stylized logo and exclusive concerts throughout the year (an invite-only Fergie concert in South East Asia middle of this year).

On to the phone. The ROKR E8 implements the ModeShift technology that blacks out and highlights user interface buttons depending on what mode the ROKR is in. From the photos above, you can see how the E8 shifts from phone mode to MP3 player mode to camera mode. Only pertinent buttons will become active and highlighted by the backlight below the glass surface. It takes a while getting used to the “keypad” as there is no tactile feedback from each key. To narrate the experience of pushing a button … you basically get a depression of the entire phone whenever part of the keypad is pushed. It isn’t alarming – it just takes time to get used to.

Another new thing we need to get used to is the 3/4 scroll wheel which Motorola calls FastScroll. When the iPod was introduced, Jobs wanted a way for users to be able to quickly scroll through their 5GB playlist. The best way to do this from a UI perspective was to make the selection screen a wheel so that people don’t get tired of holding the up or down button. Motorola has pseudo-implemented the same technology on the phone. I’m sure there is a way to change the sensitivity settings of the FastScroll navigation. It felt awkward at first – although you can always use the D-Pad for more precise selection.

What characterizes the ROKR brand is the inclusion of a 3.5mm jack and high quality earphones as compared to the W230 series which only has a 2.5mm jack.

Bottomline
Pegged to cost around USD $300.00 (unconfirmed price indicates that it will be around PHP 15,000.00 to P17,000.00), the E8 is definitely an affordable and elegant choice of an MP3 player + phone. Motorola has bundled a great set of earphones for the ROKR (I still use my bundled earphones from the old ROKR E2 on my iPod — that’s how good they are). This phone is a great buy.

Fast Features:
3.5mm stereo jack
2.0MP camera with 8x digital zoom
2GB internal memory with support for microSD up to 4GB
“Talking phone” that reads out messages when you can’t look at the screen

Post from: Cellphone9