With the release of two new Motorola phones, the ROKR EM30 and the ROKR EM25, Motorola has released new artist collaborations. If you’re from the west, you definitely have never heard of these guys as they’re more famous in South East Asia. Nonetheless, they rock!

The new collaborations include artists such as Imago, Nyco Maca, Queso, Angulo and DJ Mark Nicosia.

[photo c/o Odyssey Live and Motorola PR ]

Post from: Cellphone9

This is why I wait for second generation releases. The Motorola ROKR E8 was Moto’s first music phone to use the proprietary ModeShift technology. Roughly six months later, Motorola releases the new ROKR EM30, a cheaper second generation ROKR that spells 2008’s high end music phone market for Motorola.

But high end is actually a misnomer as the EM30, though improving on a number of features the previous ROKR didn’t execute so well at, is actually much cheaper, going into the $200.00 mark. No final price has yet been released but it supposedly is now targeting the mid-market range, having high end features.

Perhaps the biggest improvement to the EM30 is the new front panel for data input. The previous ROKR had some issues with its “too futuristic” design having one huge panel for you to input text. At the end of they day, it became such a chore to even select the next icon on the menu because the touch sensitive pad was either too sensitive or not sensitive at all. It was a pain to navigate. The EM30 fixes this problem by implementing solid buttons to press down on, charaterized by pieces of plastic jutting out of the real estate to ensure your thumb that it’s pressing the right buttons. The joystick was also improved, sans the half wheel navigation feature that was more of a pain than pleasure to use.

The ModeShift technology has also been improved a bit. Now, the icons change color as well when you shift to other modes. For instance, the keypad glows blue when in phone mode and red when in music player mode.

Not much has been sacrificed with the ROKR – instead of the huge internal memory of the previous device, the new EM30 has only 30MB of internal storage but its expansion slot can accommodate up to 8GB of data.

Other features include:

FM Radio with RDS
2.0MP camera w/ Digital Zoom
3.5mm stereo input
Microsoft Music EcoSystem Support
GPRS during calls
Text2Speech Recognition

Post from: Cellphone9

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