The Rokr E8 doesn’t “look” like a Motorola phone, in most ways. The phone has a Motorola logo on the face and in the center of the back panel, of course. The only other tell-tale of the Motorola manufacture comes the four-way control front and center, surrounded by six buttons. Motorola users may recall this layout from the Z10 and other Motorola handsets.
The Rokr E8 is well-designed and stylish, with a completely touch face with haptics; no hard buttons adorn the face of this phone. As for the haptics, many users find them indispensable and other find them nearly unusable. Users who love haptics will find this phone very usable.
The touch face is important to Motorola’s ModeShift feature. ModeShift changes the visible controls to reflect only the options available in that mode (music player, camera, etc.). The face is backlit, and the display characters can be changed or shut off. For example, when the phone is shut off, the screen goes completely black.
The four-way control scrolls like an iPod wheel, but the FastScroll feature can move a little too fast. The four-way control and the buttons are interchangeable, so the user can work with whichever control suits their needs at the time.
While the 2-inch LCD screen is rather small, it offers great quality and houses the touch “buttons,” which are responsive and work well. Those users who love haptics will appreciate the haptics on the Rokr E8, and so forth.
The side of the phone features hard buttosn for the 2-megapixel camera, volume and the power/lock slider. Missing is a dedicated media player button on the side; there is a button for the media player on the front. This seems like a major oversight in a music phone.
2 GB of onboard storage and a microSD expansion slot make for plenty of storage room for music, and a 3.5 mm jack for custom headphones. The bundled headset is the aerial for the radio, and also features a hands-free mic. While the included headset is not all that great, regular headphones will work with the radio.
The music player is relatively intuitive and easy to use. The speaker is hidden in the bottom of the handset, an unusual location, but the sound is quite good compared to some other handsets. As a music phone, in spite of the media player button being hidden, this is a great handset for audiophiles. The music player can run while navigating menus of the phone, playing games and doing other activities on the phone (except calling, of course), so this phone feels like a music player.
The E8 has no 3G support, but does have EDGE. There is no wi-fi or GPS, but the phone does include A2DP Bluetooth. And the phone runs on Motorola’s Chameleon platform for a great interface.
While the E8 could have more features, the ones it does have seem to work quite well.
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