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Motorola iTunes Phone Review
The idea behind the iTunes phone is simple: multitasking. Why carry an iPod and a cell phone with you when they can be combined? The Motorola iTunes cell phone is the Motorola ROKR, which can support downloading up to 100 songs to the cell phone from your PC or Mac (actually, the storage capacity is approximate and based on 4 minutes per song and 128Kbps AAC encoding). With the combo cell phone / iTunes player, you can listen through the included stereo headphones or out loud on the ROKR’s surround sound speakers. Also, as this is a cell phone, you can pause music while taking an incoming call. Motorola iTunes Cell Phone (ROKR E1) Motorola iTunes Phone Review - The Bottom Line While this is a great idea (combining gadgets under one device), there are some flaws associated with this 1.0 try-out. For one, it takes a lot of time to download songs from your computer to your Motorola iTunes phone through the USB 1.0 cable (Approximate iTunes transfer time is 30 seconds for 4MB music file. Transfer times will vary). In fact, it may take as much as 30 times more time than downloading with an Apple iPod. However, taking a second look at this phone, there are some additional points to consider. For example, the cell phone comes with an integrated VGA camera with video send and playback, it provides Bluetooth connectivity, and the price is not too bad (in the under $300 category). All in all, a solid effort to combine multiple devices under one. However, I wish the Motorola design team would have come up with something more exciting design-wise.
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