Thumbs Up - Music & Ringtones Blog - Thumbplay.com

T-Mobile subscribers will get access to arguably the carrier's best music phone and a phone with the most unusual touchscreen interface ever, the Motorola E8 ROKR, next Monday, July 7. It'll be priced at $199 with a two-year contract and a $50 mail-in rebate, $249 with a one-year contract and a $50 mail-in rebate, or $349 sans contract.

On the face of the candybar E8 is a unique touchscreen. In normal mode, backlights display the usual dialpad . When in music mode, the screen shows only music controls (left). In 2 MP camera mode, you get imaging controls (right). When asleep, the E8's glass face is glossy black with only tiny raised dots indicating where backlit controls will be.

And when you press a backlit button, you get localized haptics, squishy tactile feedback that lets you know you sucessfully pushed the virtual button.

While the quasi-touchscreen and haptic sensation is unusual, the ROKR's real purpose is as a music player. Inside the E8 is 2 GB of built-in memory, which can be supplemented via the high capacity microSD card slot. 8 GB cards just became available, so the E8 can boast up to 10 GB in music and photo memory. E8 also supports a wide variety of non-DRM music formats including MP3, AAC, AAC+, Enhanced AAC+, WMA and Real Audio v10. Cleverly, any track you load in can be assigned as a ringtone.

Music continues to play regardless of whatever application you navigate to. E8 is equipped with a 3.5 headphone jack and comes with a stereo earphones, or you can take advantage of its stereo Bluetooth capability. Unfortunately, T-Mobile has no music services, so you'll have to supply your own tunes.

Speaking of navigation, you navigate through all the E8's menus via what Motorola calls a FastScroll arc, a sort-of scroll wheel. A ModeShift button on the side gets you instantly to the camera, and a music icon on the front touchscreen gets you instantly to the music player.

As a phone, E8's conversational abilities are enhanced by Motorola's ClearTalk technology. E8 is only an EDGE phone – T-Mobile doesn't yet offer a high-speed network, but you also get an FM radio in case your own music bores you.

Labels: cellphones