Motorola's line of music-friendly handsets didn't make the greatest debut with the ultimately flawed Motorokr E1, although its successor, the Motorokr E8, shows the mobile-maker has learnt a new trick or two. The slimmer and more stylish ROKR E8 has a virtual keypad, standard five-way navigation buttons and an innovative touch-sensitive wheel for scrolling through menus and lists.
One of the handset's main drawcards is ModeShift technology that lights up a different set of keys depending on whether the handset is in phone, music or camera mode. Coupled with haptic vibration technology, which confirms the pressing of a virtual key, the result is superior to many conventional keypads.
Musically, the ROKR E8 can play back all the main digital audio formats, which are searchable in various ways, including by composer, genre, artist and album. Playlists can be created easily.
Other music features include a 3.5mm socket for standard earphones and a microSD slot for adding to the 2GB of built-in memory. This ARIA Edition of the ROKR E8 provides online links to the ARIA weekly Top 10 downloadable songs.
The wheel is a convenient alternative to the standard navigation keys, particularly when searching long lists of contacts and songs. Regardless of the method, the menu system is not overly responsive and the wheel can be tricky to use. Bluetooth allows the ROKR E8 to connect wirelessly with compatible hands-free car kits, headphones and speakers, though Wi-Fi and 3G support are nowhere to be found, which makes the built-in web browser painfully slow.
Also disappointing is the two-megapixel fixed-focus camera without flash that produces average quality images at best.
While the ROKR E8 trumps its predecessor, there is room for improvement. The control system works well though and its performance as a music player is solid.
No comments:
Post a Comment