Motorola Rokr E1

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Features
It's no surprise that the music player is the ROKR's primary attraction--it's called the ROKR, after all--but we'll get to the music functionality in a minute. The rest of the Motorola ROKR E1 covers a satisfying array of features. The phone book holds 1,000 contacts, each of which can take six phone numbers, an e-mail address, a postal address, and a birth date; the SIM card holds an additional 250 names. You can assign contacts to caller groups, pair them with a picture for photo caller ID, or assign them one of eight polyphonic ring tones--somewhat sparse for a music phone. Other features include a vibrate mode; instant messaging; voice dialing; call timers; a calculator; e-mail support for POP3, IMAP4, and SMTP; a date book; an alarm clock; text and multimedia messaging; a password-protected "safe" for storing personal information; syncing for your calendar and contacts; and a WAP 2.0 wireless Web browser, though there's no FM radio. We're pleased to see the ROKR E1 came with Bluetooth and a speakerphone, but these extras quickly lost their luster. The ROKR's Bluetooth functionality is limited to voice calls, and you can activate the speakerphone only after you've made a call.

	The iTunes interface is simple but sluggish.

The iTunes experience on the ROKR is remarkably similar to the iPod's, so there is instant familiarity for iPod owners. Opening the player takes you straight to the music library, where you can organize songs by playlist, artist, album, and name. Under the Playlists option, you'll see transferred playlists, plus one called Mobile Phone, which holds the songs created by the convenient iTunes' Autofill feature. When playing music, the phone goes back into standby mode while displaying onscreen soft controls and album art. Settings include shuffle of songs or albums, as well as repeat one or all but no equalizers. Transferring between the cell phone and the music player is seamless, as music automatically stops when you receive a call. Hang up and press the dedicated iTunes key, and your song picks up again from the point you left off. There's also an airplane mode that lets you listen to your tunes in flight with the cell phone turned off.

Despite all the things the ROKR's music player can do, there are quite a few it can't. To begin with, you can download songs only through the included USB cable. There's no way to transfer iTunes music wirelessly, and since you must listen to music through the included wired headset, Bluetooth fanatics won't be pleased. There is a strict 100-song storage limit, and the iTunes tracks are stored on the 512MB TransFlash card. You can't store downloads on the phone's 5MB of integrated memory, and if you try to store 101 tracks, you'll get an error message. Though 100 songs may be perfectly fine for some users, we were miffed by the cap. For a device that's all about music, we were hoping for at least 1GB. What's worse, Apple said the 100-song limit won't change even if bigger cards come out, despite the fact that TransFlash cards are currently limited to 512MB. But wait, there are more catches. The ROKR E1 pairs with merely one computer at a time. When we tried connecting to a second computer, the ROKR E1 erased all our previously loaded songs. And lastly, you can't use iTunes tracks as ring tones. (Note: For ROKR E1 units in Asia, the song limitation is 50, not 100. This is due to licensing agreements between Motorola and Apple.)

In addition to the iTunes player, there's a separate, generic Motorola-designed MP3 player that supports MP3, MIDI, WAV, AAC, and DRM AAC files. Fortunately, it accepts downloads through Bluetooth, and you can use stored tracks as ring tones. Keep in mind, though, that this second player is not connected to the iTunes player in any way, so you can't transfer files back and forth. Also, the ROKR E1's meager integrated memory will limit you to about 20 songs.

	The camera lens includes a flash and a self-portrait mirror.

We were disappointed that the Motorola ROKR E1 has just a VGA camera, particularly for such an expensive phone. Still, it comes with a satisfying set of options. You can take pictures in 640x480, 320x240, and 160x120 resolutions; choose from seven lighting settings; and adjust the brightness. You also get a 4X zoom, a bright flash, a self-portrait mirror, an autotimer (5 or 10 seconds), and a selection of five shutter sounds, as well as a Silent option. The MPEG-4 video recorder takes clips up to 30 seconds in length with sound in two resolutions: 176x144 and 128x96. You can use the flash as a light for your films and choose a lighting setting. Photos and video were about what you'd expect from a VGA camera: fine for viewing on a computer but nothing that you'd want to print out. When finished with your snaps and clips, you can send them in a multimedia message or save them to the phone. You also can save your work to the TransFlash card, but you'll probably want to keep that chunk of memory for your music.

	The ROKR E1 has average photo quality for a camera phone.

You can personalize the ROKR E1 with a variety of wallpaper, themes, menu styles, color skins, screensavers, and message tones. If you'd like more options or ring tones, you can download them from Cingular. You get just one Java (J2ME) game but can always download more if you're an avid gamer. It's a letdown, however, that the phone supports only GPRS data speeds and not EDGE.

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