Exterior
We recently got our hands on the Motorola ROKR E2. Our review unit came in black and orange and the music control keys on the left side of the phone immediately made a favourable impression on us. The keypad locks just like on most MP3 players, namely by sliding a button on the right side of the device.

The rounded shape of the phone is quite pleasant to the eyes, and the dotted back panel helped to provide some grip to the device, especially if you are going to be fiddling around with the music buttons frequently.

Buttons/Screen
The buttons sport white text on a black background, and the keypad also lights up in white. The music buttons on the sides light up with an orange backlight and are silver in colour with the symbols cut into the button.

The screen is a 240 x 320 pixels TFT one, and it lights up in 262K of colours. Nearly everyone who saw it agreed that the screen was a really attractive one that displayed very vibrant colours, especially when in the camera viewfinder mode.

Software/Messaging
The menu is the standard Motorola 3x3 grid of icons, and a voice program reads the name of the icon that you select as you scroll around the page. The ROKR E2 utilises the Linux operating system, although it appears nearly the same as the generic Motorola OS that appears in most Motorola phones.

The SMS no longer has the iTAP setting on by default. In fact, the phone even offers to learn your preferences for SMS shortcuts. That would be a very useful feature if you took the time to program your preferences into the system.

As with most other phones of this period, the POP3 and IMAP4 protocols for email are supported by this phone.

There are subtle differences in the applications though. Although everything looks pretty much the same, the ROKR uses the Linux OS to great effect, adding voice readouts for menu items. At least everything looks pretty much the same, otherwise we would have to relearn another new interface of which Motorola has gone through quite a few in the last few years before finally settling on variants of this one about a couple of years ago.

Camera/Video
The camera on the ROKR E2 is a 1.3 megapixel one. It is capable of 4x digital zoom and it also has a function that permits multishot modes of up to eight pictures. There is a function marked styles within the picture menu, and this allows the picture to be filtered with red, blue and green filters in addition to the unfiltered option that is the default option.

The Video Camera shoots movies in both small and medium resolutions, while there are four different resolutions for still pictures. The smallest size is Thumbnail at around 120KB. This then increases to Small size at 240 KB, Medium at 480 KB and Large at 1MB resolution.

Multimedia/Voice
Of course, the key selling point of the ROKR device is its ability to store and play back large amounts of music relative to regular handsets, and therefore the music playback capabilities are much better than what is available on other phones.

The loudspeaker is also pretty good compared to other phones, but both of these functions drain the battery rather quick. We think that music-playing phones should do something about their battery lifespan, as the extra drain of the music player would quickly use up the charge in the battery, and also limit the number of months that the battery can be used before it starts.

The voice that reads aloud the items that you select off the menu is a nice touch, at least for a while. After a while, you will probably head to the settings menu and turn off the talking phone option. The downside is that you will have to do it one at a time because there is no master menu option to turn off the talking phone option.

Connectivity
Bluetooth has been built into this phone, but Infrared is not. This one is not a 3G phone, but it supports GPRS all the way up to Class 10. There is a USB port which can be used both for charging and for connecting the phone to a computer to load the music into the phone.

Games
There are two games in the phone. Asphalt is a drift racing game that puts you in control of a car and race around different roads, mostly set into urban landscapes. Block Breaker Deluxe requires you to bounce a ball around and knock off blocks on the screen.

• Tags : Motorola ROKR E2