Review: Motorola Rokr E1

A mobile phone that thinks it’s an iPod

The Motorola Rokr E1 is the first mobile phone to work with Apple’s Itunes music-management software.

While this may sound like a match made in heaven, the Rokr E1 is let down in several areas. Its pearl-white finish is attractive, but it lacks the panache of an Ipod or even Motorola’s own Razr handsets.

As a phone, the Rokr is commendable. Its menus are easy to navigate, it has a long battery life and, being triband, you can use it in most countries. Plus, it is also light.

Unfortunately, the Rokr’s mp3 features let it down. It connects to your PC via a USB cable and uses Itunes to grab music stored on that computer.

The Rokr E1 comes with a 512MB memory card, but bizarrely has a software-imposed capacity of just 100 tracks.

Even if you have space to hold more music, you’ll only be able to use the extra space for keeping images, video files and so on. This feature was a huge disappointment, as many ordinary mobile phones can accept high-capacity memory cards (up to 2GB) and don’t restrict the number of songs you can play.

We managed to squeeze more than 100 songs onto the Rokr, but we had to stitch multiple songs end to end into a single track before adding it to Itunes. Unfortunately you can only do this with unprotected music files such as those ripped from a CD and not those bought via Itunes.

Audio quality was also a disappointment. It produces plenty of bass, but it lacks balance in the mid- and high-frequency ranges.

The concept behind the Rokr E1 is sound, but unless you really want the all-in-one functionality, you may be better off buying an ordinary Ipod Shuffle and gluing it to a cheap mobile phone.

Manufacturer: Motorola

Ratings

Overall rating: 3/5

Features: 3/5

Value for money: 3/5

Verdict

Pros: Itunes support; lightweight; battery life

Cons: 100-track limit; sound quality

Overall: A great concept, but let down by software limitations