In spite of being a huge fan of Nokia handsets, we tried our hands at the Moto Rokr E8 for a review. This phone is truly aimed at users who are very passionate about music.
At the first glance during the review the phone looked quite unique, putting aside the traditional keypads or the full-QWERTY keyboards, the Moto Rokr E8 introduces a new glass-like virtual keypad with Motorola’s ModeShift technology. Well, it is not touch sensitive and you have to exert a little pressure to prick the sensor at the right place. Though typing quickly was difficult, SMS and instant messaging is fairly good. The virtual keyboard sets apart the Rokr E8 from other phones but needs to be maintained as it easily gets patched with your finger prints.
The right side of the phone equips a dual purpose metallic slider switch that locks the keypad on moving it upwards and powers off the phone on moving it downwards. Thus you don’t have to type in multiple combinations to unlock or lock the keypad. Similarly, two such switches are on the left side of the phone, one of which lets you control the volume and the other one is a select key.
We don’t doubt the credibility of its sleekness but nevertheless it’s still a bit big in size. It’s a sleek looking one with decent looks. On the camera front, some more megapixels would be appreciated. But the various styles including Blue, Antique, Reddish, Negative and Greenish add some fun to picture taking. The call quality, one of the prime aspects, is quite good and the user interface is decent enough.
On the music front, it’s a boon to the music lovers, delivering clear and quality music. On pressing the direct music access icon on its glass-like keypad, the normal keypad disappears and you can visualize the illuminated keys taking the form of an iPod. The Fastscroll touch wheel gives it the iPod kind of feel and makes it convenient to easily scroll through the playlists. It offers shuffle and repeat modes, an equalizer with 11 settings, bass boost, 3D stereo and playlists. On the music transfer front, we aren’t really pleased with the synchronization with Windows Media player 11. The music ID option is fine as well as interesting.
Well, its 2 GB internal memory is worth appreciation, good enough for a music phone. Additionally, it also supports microSD card up to 4 GB of memory. Motorola has definitely struck the chords right with it. We tried recording a song with the voice recorder and are impressed with the quality. One of its flaws is its battery life that lets you listen to music up to 4 hours.
If you are into bit of gaming as well, then Moto Rokr wont disappoint you as it comes pre loaded with games like Jamdat Sudoku and Tetris. For the business executives it features the World Clock for selected cities in the world that displays the time of any three cities of your choice.
Overall if you are looking for a mid- range music phone with some decent features then Moto Rokr E8 is a good option. Grab it for MRP Rs. 13,999. Well, we would like to rate it 7 out of 10.