Motorola ROKR E8

The Motorola ROKR E8 takes us back to the E-suffix for the ROKR range, after a minor excursion with the Z6. Anyway, there have obviously been many changes, and this appears to be a music player with the mobile phone added later.

In the box (prototype)

- Handset Transceiver

- Battery (standard bttery)

- Charger

- Headset

- Data Cable

- Manual and CDs

Exterior

The ROKR E8 is a sleek device, bevelled at the top and bottom edges to turn what would be an otherwise ordinarily-shaped candybar device into a work of art.

The E8 is designed for heavy music usage, as can be deduced from the headset jack which is found on the top of the device, much like in a music player. Toggle buttons are on the left of the device, while the power switch and micro USB port are on the right side of the device.

The microSD memory card slot is under the cover, but not really blocked by the battery so while you could theoretically force a card in, taking out that card might not be quite possible.

Buttons/Screen

The buttons are mainly of the touch pressure variety under the big transparent frontpiece. The keypad does not light up at first but simply displays the music controls. Lighting up the numberpad is done by pressing the left softkey which then lights up the numberpad so that you can make a call.

The keypad makes a curious sound which can only be described as squeaking. Initially, we thought that it was the plastic protesting against our rather forceful pressing on the keypad. But the lower part did not make that sound until we activated the numberpad.

Therefore, it was a built-in effect.

The screen is specified at 240 x 320 pixels with 262K colours.

Software/Messaging

We were given the R6713 version of what appears to be a Motorola proprietary operating system. The menu was of the scroll from side-to-side variety and we could not find a way to change that into the commonly- found grid display. Not from the settings menu anyway.

SMS and MMS is included as expected. Email is also available but the touch screen controls did not make for very responsive text entry.

PIM

The PIM section has the Tasks, Calendar, and a Calculator. The common Notes application is nowhere to be seen, but the Alarm and World Clock applications can be found here.

Camera/Video

The E8 has a 2.0 megapixel camera with the lens on the back of the device. There is a multi-shot option that permits a setting of 4, 6 or 8 shots. The maximum resolution for still pictures is 1600 x 1200 pixels

The navigation key provides access to the picture effects. You can filter images in red, green and blue, but this was almost the limit of the effects section.

The maximum video resolution is 144 x 176 pixels. Although this leads us to conclude that the E8 had a fair camera, it was not meant for heavy imaging use. Touch-sensitive controls are difficult in the real-world use of a digital camera.

Multimedia/Voice

The multimedia section is quite developed, seeing that this is a music phone with 2GB of memory space inside. There is also a radio receiver built into the device, but we were quite surprised that there was no equaliser inside.

Connectivity

There is no 3G or HSDPA option for this phone. It does support GPRS and EDGE up to class 12 and comes with the requisite Bluetooth for local connections. Other than that, the USB port is also useful for PC to phone data transfer.

Games

There were two games inside the device. One was a Sudoku game which is pretty self-explanatory. The other is Asphalt 3 3D, which is a racing game called Asphalt 3, despite the rather confusing title. The racing game was fairly simple. I managed to finish second out of eight the very first time I tried it out, so I am either a very good driver or just lucky.

Motorola ROKR E8 vs Samsung SGH F250