Motorola ROKR E1

"It's not an iPod. It's a ROKR" That's what Motorola's tech support line told us when we started complaining that the first iTunes phone doesn't live up to the iHype. The Motorola ROKR E1 is the first phone with iTunes, able to sync music easily with PC and Macs, and play ballads bought from Apple's music store. on the other hand the phone is full of little limitations, quirks and glitches that make it of les than Apple-like quality.

Actually, the ROKR E1 isn't really an "Apple phone" It's an existing Motorola phone—the E398 which was not at any time released in the U.S.—with iTunes added. Sadly for us, with the "E398/E1" we failed to experience the lust for a like reason often generated by the visual appeal of the iPod and Motorola RAZR. Don't obtain us wrong, this small 32-ounce phone released in Europe above a year ago, is still attractive and comfortable to clinch But if you really want a device with the best of what Motorola and Apple have to proffer we'd suggest buying a RAZR and an iPod nano and gluing them together.

Most ROKR buyer won't be buying this phone for its direct the eyes or phone features. What they're seeking is a befitting phone that connects easily to iTunes. The ROKR direct the eyes to your PC or Mac just like an iPod jumble Plug it into your computer with the included white USB cable and you can drag canticles or playlists onto the little ROKR icon, hit the Autofill defence icon in iTunes on your PC to fill up your ROKR with random music, or store files upon it by using it as a USB flash drive.

The ROKR's treatment of iTunes, however, isn't up to iPod standards in several ways. The worst thing is the coarse awakening you'll get if you examine to connect your ROKR at one as well as the other home and work: The ROKR pairs with solitary one computer. When we plugg the phone into a next to the first computer, it erased all the onboard music! In addition, the phone's memory card stores sole 100 songs. Yes, we know you could probably fit 120 dittys into 512MB, but there's a software-imposed cap of 100 songs: When we tried to add a 101st track, we got an error message. The ROKR also won't transfer the automatic Podcast playlist base in every copy of iTunes, although it handles other Smart Playlists.

We also divest of coveringed a very peculiar example of nonintegration between the sum of two units companies involved—the phone has a next to the first separate MP3 player on the Motorola side of the phone that doesn't talk to iTunes at all. If you project over an MP3 file using Bluetooth, it appears in this next to the first music player, which is also used to manage ringtones. with equal reason theoretically, you could store 100 canzonets in iTunes and another 20 in this Motorola music player, on the other hand that seems an insanely clunky way of doing things.

As for the ease of the iTunes experience, it is comfortably similar to that of an iPod; hit the dedicated iTunes button upon the ROKR and you explosion into a typical iTunes interface, with options to view ballads by artist, album, or title, or to confuse songs. When you play carols album art appears on the phone's shield as well.

So What About the Phone?

Other than iTunes, nothing here is cutting-edge, on the other hand you will find a comely set of midrange features. The VGA camera is okay; images are a bit dim with more [i]or[/i] less visible compression artifacts, but there are no annoying color tinges. Bluetooth 12 support includes headsets, contact syncing, and file transfer, on the contrary nothing fancy like stereo audio. We sync contacts and calendars favorably over Bluetooth with both Motorola's Mobile Phone Tools software upon a PC and Apple's iSync upon a Mac. We sent instant messages above AIM, and we downloaded e-mail fortunately with the phone's basic POP3/IMAP4 mail client. The phone throws messages, surfs WAP sites, and link togethers to your PC for modem use, albeit with deliberate GPRS, rather than Cingular's faster cutting side network.

You can save photos, e-mail, or MP3 ringtones in the phone's anemic 5MB of memory or upon the built-in 512MB TransFlash card, which is located actual inconveniently under the battery. Adding similar data to the card means shrinking the space available for your music library.

Until you pres the iTunes button, the E1 works just like other Motorola phone of the like kind as the V551 or the V600 Calls are clear, notwithstanding that we had some audio dropout above Sony Ericsson and Logitech Bluetooth headsets. The 176–by-220 color guard is fine indoors, but we had agitate reading it in sunlight, as it's not as bright as that of the V551 We like that the speakerphone is loud

The ROKR's battery life was abundant as Motorola promised: More than 15 hours of music-listening time with headphones, or a rocking 12 hours, 30 minutes of continuous talk time. That's eminent for any phone, and level a little better than the Sony Ericsson W800i.

On the phone itself, there's sometimes a lag between pressing lock openers and actions taking effect. The convolution control has only seven paces and there's no way to fast forward or rewind quickly, because there's no click wheel (one of the great features of the iPod). And although Motorola includes an adapter for standard stereo-music headphones, unlike the adapter from the Sony Ericsson W800i, it doesn't have a mic upon it, so you have to pick out between your top-notch music headphones and a working phone headset.