By Damian Koh
21/05/2008
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/mobilephones/0,39051199,42514758p,00.htm

Motorola's ROKR E1 made its debut in 2005, but the iTunes-compatible handset didn't turn out to be a worthy iPod replacement. Instead, reviewers critiqued the E1 as simply a normal phone with Apple iTunes software preinstalled. Moto repeated its attempt at a music-focused device shortly after with the ROKR E2 and a number of upgraded features and, again, the response was, at best, lackluster.

The latest to join the ROKR series (after the touchscreen E6 and slider Z6) is the E8 that was announced at this year's annual CES. For the record, the E8 nabbed CNET's Best of CES award in the cell phones and smart phones category.

Design

It is easy to mistake the ROKR E8 for a bar of Godiva in its black wrapper, because that's what it looks like. At 115 x 53 x 10.6mm and weighing 100g, the E8 has an average size for a phone. What sets it apart from its competition is its new keypad. Or rather, its lack of one.

In idle, only three columns of tiny nubs marking the positions of the numbers on the underlying keypad and an incomplete silver ring are visible. Once activated, the alphanumeric keypad and the control panel light up from under the phone's clear plastic surface, making the keypad look like it is floating in limbo.

Although the tiny nubs are supposed to help us find our way with the keypad, it was impossible to type on the screen without looking at it. In addition, the shortcut buttons to the music player and correction key are a tad too close to the call/end controls. So we ended up pressing the wrong ones on several occasions.

Because the E8 doesn't come with conventional hard keys, Moto substituted the typical user experience with a "vibrating" keypad. This isn't the first time haptic feedback is used on phones. However, on earlier models such as the Razr2 V9, the vibrating feedback was implemented primarily on the music controls on the external LCD. With the E8, every control and every button you press will register a short pulse of vibration. While that's generally a good thing (at least there's some sort of tactility), we felt the overall user experience lacking.

The E8's other showpiece is the scrolling toggle marked by an incomplete silver ring. The toggle doesn't go full circle, and if we trace our digit on the missing portion of the circle at the bottom, the cursor on the screen would stop and then resume again when we got to the other side. If you are not used to it, you can always fall back on the four-way pad. The scrolling toggle is fun to play with initially, but after a while, you'll find yourself clicking left and right more often.

Elsewhere on the phone, the 3.5mm headset jack is on the top of the phone protected by a piece of rubber cover (you can pluck this off and discard it). A manual keylock switch accompanies the proprietary port on the right edge. Although the front of the E8 is glossy, the back is made from soft-touch plastic. You can also find the 2-megapixel camera at the back with the onboard speaker on the bottom edge. The disappointment is that while the E8 comes with a generous 2GB of in-built memory, to get to the microSD expansion card slot, you'll first need to remove the battery.

Features

Due to its unique implementation, Motorola was actually able to do a lot more with its "disappearing" keypad. The company dubs it the ModeShift technology. In the music player, the alphanumeric keypad "fades away" and is replaced by dedicated music controls. So it looks more like a standalone MP3 player than a phone. The same goes for the camera. You get illuminated zoom controls in addition to shortcuts to switch between picture taking, video recording and playback modes. The transition between the keypad morphing was fast and didn't affect the basic operations of the phone.

The focus of the E8 is clearly on its keypad and even though it has a regular 2-inch QVGA-resolution LCD, the panel looks a lot smaller than it really is. The reason for this is because the screen uses landscape orientation, so it's wider across than it is tall. Add a keypad that takes up two-thirds of the front of the phone, and you end up with the illusion that the handset has a small LCD screen. In use, we noticed that the panel appeared washed-out from the overhead sunlight.

Connection to the PC is via a micro-USB cable that ships with the unit. There are two ways to get music onto the handset. One is by syncing via Windows Media Player 11 on a PC using the supplied cable. The other is simply by loading a microSD card with songs. Either way, the phone's music library will be able to recognize tracks from both sources. Music formats that are supported include WMA, MP2, AAC etc, while you can also watch videos that are in MP4, RM and 3GP formats.

The E8 is a quad-band GSM phone so that means you should be able to use it anywhere in the world. 3G, in this case, would be a bonus. Other features include onboard FM radio, Bluetooth stereo A2DP for listening to music via a pair of wireless cans, and a SongID application that helps you identify an unfamiliar tune by searching the database of the service provider.

Performance

According to the literature, the 970mAh battery that ships with the E8 has a rated talktime of 5.8 hours and about 12.5 days on standby. It will also deliver up to 10 hours of music playback. Based on our typical usage pattern of listening to music, making calls and sending messages, we managed to drain the battery flat in about 1.5 days.

Audio quality on the E8 was one of the better ones we've experienced so far and using a good pair of earphones should make a difference. It has decent volume although it could afford to be clearer on the mid highs as you'll need to push up the volume to hear more details. The 3D stereo feature had a nice effect on Jazz music as it created a fuller sound.