Motorola ROKR E8 Cell Phone Reviews

Audio Quality: Playback of songs is decent through the cell phone’s speakers and included headphones. We were impressed that songs didn’t sound tinny, as is sometimes the case with music phones. The Motorola Rokr E8 sports a 3.5mm headset jack, so you can use existing headphones that you would use with a MP3 player with this cell phone to listen to music. We found audio quality was even better using our own 3.5mm headphones. Additionally, the cell phone supports Stereo Bluetooth, so you can also listen to music via wireless headphones.

We particularly like how easy it is to use the phone book. You can store as many contacts as the cell phone’s 2GB of shared internal memory can handle. That means if you’re going to use the Rokr’s entire memory for music, you won’t be able to store any contacts on the cell phone unless they are on your SIM card. Each entry in the phone book has room for five phone numbers, multiple e-mail addresses, a picture, multiple street addresses (a definite plus), other personal information, and dedicated ringtone. About that ringtone, we’re happy to report that you can save any audio file (songs included) on your cell phone as a ringtone.

Camera/Video: The Motorola Rokr E8 sports a 2-megapixel camera and video-recording capabilities. While this camera phone lacks a flash, we didn’t miss it. Picture quality is pretty good: colors are bright and details are crisp. The easiest way to access the camera is through the Shortcut Menu and choosing Take a Picture. There aren’t a lot of camera centric features, however, you can change the color of pictures (Antique, Negative, Reddish, Greenish, Bluish, and Black and White). Video quality is acceptable, but we enjoyed using the camera more.

Music: Clearly, when you have a cell phone with the word Rokr in its name music is going to play a major part. The music phone doesn’t disappoint. As we already noted, audio quality is impressive even through the cell phone’s speakers. The only real bummer here is that you’ll need to remove the battery if you want to install an external MicroSD card for more storage space. That said, the cell phone does come with a whopping 2GB of storage space, which should be plenty if you just want to store a few albums of music on the phone. In addition, to an MP3 player (it only plays MP3s and Microsoft WMA files) there’s also an FM radio and Song ID (a free service with an unlimited data plan that helps identify the name and artist of a song).

About that MP3 player, once you press the dedicated music key or access the music player through the cell phone’s menu the Rokr E8 essentially morphs itself into an MP3 player, eliminating numbers and letters on the keypad and only illuminating keys that access music features. This really is a phone that’s effectively riding both sides of the fence: cell phone and music player. Another nice feature is you can still have music playing while you do other things on the cell phone and the name of the song streams along the bottom of the screen. Additionally, the Rokr E8 does a great job with displaying album art. Though you can't make too many audio-centric adjustments, you can adjust the Equalizer, Boost the Bass, and turn on 3D stereo. You can also create playlists on the fly, shuffle and repeat songs.

Getting music onto the cell phone is fairly easy, using the mini-USB-to-USB cable that comes with the Rokr E8. With it, you can connect the Rokr to your computer, then drag and drop songs from your computer onto the phone. You can also use the MicroSD storage card that comes with the cell phone to store tunes from your PC, then slip it into the MicroSD card slot located behind the battery cover next to the SIM card slot. Once you have music on the cell phone, you can use the scroll wheel to easily navigate through large music libraries.

Connectivity/Bluetooth: We were able to pair the Motorola cell phone with a Motorola H700 Bluetooth headset. We should note call quality is pretty good when using a Bluetooth headset. You can also receive songs via Bluetooth, as well.

The spine of the cell phone isn’t littered with a ton of buttons either: there are volume keys, a dedicated key that takes on different actions in various applications, a miniUSB slot and a phone lock key (this does double duty as the power button) that litter the Rokr E8’s spine. On top of the cell phone, as is the case with many MP3 players, is the 3.5mm headset jack. We must admit it looks a little odd and clunky when looking at the cell phone in a vertical position, but when the cell phone is placed face down on a flat surface it’s not even noticeable. The display is bright, crisp, and viewable in most lighting situations. Our only quibble with the cell phone’s design is the display attracts a lot of grease and fingerprints quickly. You might find yourself using your pants or the edge of your shirt to make the screen shiny again.

Keypad: The Motorola Rokr E8 doesn’t exactly have what you think of as a numeric keypad. Oh, it’s got numbers and letters alright – they’re just basically underneath the cell phone casing. So there are no actual keys in the way we’ve come to think of keys on a cell phone. Of course this is part of the Rokr E8’s overall elegance. The good news is the white backlit numbers are well spaced apart and there are raised dots that help you delineate between them in a dark environment, so misdials are at a minimum. The keys are slick, which gives the cell phone a futuristic look and feel. Additionally, the Rokr E8 has a 4-way navi key that also does double duty as a scroll wheel. Some might have a hard time with the scroll wheel’s sensitivity. However, you can still use the North-East-West-South directional keys to navigate through menus.