Photos: Motorola's sexy new Rokr E8 and Z10
If you thought Motorola was out of the game, you might want to think again because its new music phone, the E8, really impressed us
Let's not beat around the bush. We went out to the Mobile World Congress expecting Motorola to be a little depressed post-lacklustre 2007 financial results and the loss of its CEO Ed Zander. But it wasn't.
Instead of moping around, Motorola brought along its two newest handsets, the Motorola Rokr E8 and Z10. These two handsets were announced out at CES earlier this year but this was the first time we'd been able to properly try them.
Fear not -- unlike the first Rokr handset to come out, which was so bad we were afraid to look at it -- the E8 is a superb music phone. That's right, Motorola has finally taken its finger out of the Razr pie and made an impressively good music phone.
Not only does the Rokr E8 look sexy, it's a well-conceived phone that combines the right balance of features -- a rare quality from Motorola.
Click on the next page for more pictures and information on the Motorola Rokr E8 and Z10. -Andrew Lim
Updated: a Motorola Rokr E8 hands-on video is now on the site
Further update: Read our full Motorola Z10 review and our Motorola Rokr E8 review.
Turned off and the E8's glossy black casing reveals little about its features. Turn it on and the flat keypad and colour screen light up to reveal a futuristic phone that combines vibrating feedback, a touch-sensitive scroll wheel and a new interface.
There's 2GB of onboard memory with the option to add more via a microSD card slot, a standard 3.5mm jack at the top so you can plug in normal headphones and stereo Bluetooth if you prefer to go wireless.
We were impressed by the vibrating feedback that works when you touch the flat keys and really makes you feel that you've touched a mechanical key. The E8 vibrates just under your thumb rather than the whole handset.
The Rokr E8 is nice and thin and isn't too flashy design-wise. Our only niggles with it are that the new interface, which looks great, is laggy and the headphone jack has a cover over it, which'll fall off in no time at all.
We're not completely sure about UK availability just yet but we'll let you know when we find out anything concrete.
As you can probably tell, we really liked the Rokr E8 but it didn't have as many features as we'd have liked. If a phone running Symbian and boasting HSDPA (3.5G) is more your speed, then try the Motorola Z10 on for size.
Aimed at high-end users, this phone is very similar to the Motorola Z8 but with a few upgrades, such as a 3.2-megapixel camera and film making and editing capabilities. Unfortunately, having tried out the keypad, we're not overly impressed.
The bendy design might look cool but we really feel like it compromises the keypad's ease of use. A curved keypad just doesn't feel as comfortable as a flat one and there's no real advantage to having the Z10 curve anyway.
While we're not fans of the Motorola Z10's keypad, we really like the gun metal finish. Maybe it's a geek thing, but gun metal is just such a cool colour. For all you manufacturers who are reading this -- make more gun metal-coloured products, please!