Motorola Rokr E1

Performance
We tested the triband (GSM 850/1800/1900; GPRS) Motorola ROKR E1 in San Francisco using Cingular's network. Call quality was satisfactory, with good clarity and volume. Callers could tell we were using a cell phone, but the signal remained relatively strong, and we had little interference from other electronic devices. Occasionally, the voice quality had an echoing sound, but it wasn't bothersome. Calls over the speakerphone diminished slightly in quality, but that's nothing out of the ordinary for a cell phone. We tried using the ROKR E1 with the Plantronics Discovery 640 Bluetooth headset. We paired the two devices quickly and had good sound quality throughout calls. The first thing an experienced iPod user will notice about the ROKR E1's iTunes player is noticeably slow performance. There are obvious navigation delays--occasionally up to two seconds, particularly when skipping through songs or changing screens. We also fault the transfer speed. We sat staring at iTunes, as it took more than 12 minutes to transfer 90MB worth of tracks (22 tracks at 0.12MB per second). In contrast, the iPod Shuffle has a transfer rate of 1.38MB per second, while the iPod Photo has a rate of 7.49MB per second.

One area where the ROKR excels over its MP3 cell phone peers is sound quality. It compares well to an Apple iPod Photo, though there are no equalizer settings to customize your sound. The ROKR E1 won't give you the bright sounds of a Cowon iAudio U2, for example, but it won't disappoint anyone who values good acoustics.

The ROKR E1 has a rated talk time of 9 hours, which we met in our tests, and a promised standby time of 9 days. Music-only playback time is rated at 15 hours. According to FCC radiation tests, the ROKR E1 has a digital SAR rating of 1.01 watts per kilogram.

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