Review: Motorola ROKR E8

Motorola ROKR E8 Review

Phone rating:

In a nutshell: The Motorola ROKR E8 is a first-class music phone with a whopping 2GB of memory built in, and support for an additional 4GB memory card. It's a sleek, minimalist phone with a context-sensitive touchscreen that works very well. Other features include an FM radio, 2 megapixel camera, web browser, quadband and an excellent battery life. Highly recommended!
Best buy: *Free* with half-price line rental from Mobiles.co.uk.

The ROKR series is Motorola's answer to Sony Ericsson's Walkman range, and is intended primarily as a music phone. Like the Samsung Soul and the LG Venus, the E8 features virtual touch-sensitive buttons, and menus that adapt to the function that you are currently using: phone, music player or imaging mode. This gives the phone a sleek minimalist appearance that definitely lends an edge when it comes to looks. The use of a haptic (i.e. vibration) touchscreen gives positive feedback to the on-screen menus, and makes the phone easy to use. Combining this with the FastScroll navigation wheel lets you use the music player functions with ease.

The phone is slim too, and weighs in at 106g, which is slightly heavier than average, but gives the phone a bit more "body", making it sit nicely in the hand.

The E8 majors in music, so lets take a look at what it can do. As we've already commented, the music player is very easy to use, with the combination of context-sensitive touchscreen controls and the FastScroll navigation wheel. You can easily create playlists on the go, whilst listening to music, and organising your music and playlists is very easy with a drag-and-drop user interface. The phone is compatible with Windows Media Player 11, and Motorola have provided access to over 200 online music stores if you want to download music directly to your phone. An FM radio is also built into the phone. Audio quality is good and the music player supports all the common digital formats. Naturally, the E8 supports stereo Bluetooth headsets, and the use of a standard 3.5mm headphone jack means that you can connect your own headphones.

But perhaps the most exceptional feature of the E8 is its enormous memory capacity - up to 6 GB. The inbuilt memory is huge, at 2 Gbytes, and you can add a 4 Gbyte memory card if your music collection is big enough! This will give you enough storage for 1,500 MP3 tracks (more if compressed.) Motorola seem to have really over-delivered on memory, and we very much welcome this. Compare the 2GB of onboard memory with the pathetic 12 Mbytes of the Sony Ericsson W580i, or the paltry 30 Mbytes of the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic.

The ROKR E8 certainly delivers when it comes to music. It also includes most other essential features: a 2 megapixel camera with zoom but no flash, a video camera, a web browser, and email. The camera isn't brilliant, but remember that this is intended as a music phone. The E9 seems to work well as a phone too, with good reception and clear call quality. Motorola's CrystalTalk™ technology helps to improve voice clarity by reducing background noise. We'd also like to point out that the battery life is excellent too, despite the slimness of the phone.

We weren't expecting to be blown away by the ROKR E8, but in fact we're very impressed. Motorola have delivered a mid-range music phone that can easily hold its own against mid-range phones from the other manufacturers. It comes with exceptional storage capacity and delivers an innovative new user interface without any obvious glitches. Compared with similarly priced offerings from Sony Ericsson (W580i) and Nokia (5310 XpressMusic) we think that the ROKR E8 is the clear winner. Highly recommended!

Features of the Motorola ROKR E8 include:

• 2 megabyte camera with 8x digital zoom
• Video camera (176 x 144 pixels, 15 frames per second) with 4x digital zoom and video editor
• Display: 262K TFT, 240 x 320 pixels (2.0 inches)
• Music player (supports MIDI, MP3, AAC, AAC+, Enhanced AAC+, WMA, WAV, AMR-NB and Real Audio (RA) v10 formats)
• FM Radio
• Messaging: MMS, IM, SMS, Email
• Wallpaper, screensaver, customisable ringtones
• Voice dialling with user independent voice recognition
• Handsfree speakerphone
• Memory: 2 Gbytes plus memory card (up to 4 Gbytes)
• Connectivity: USB 2.0, Bluetooth, 3.5mm headphone jack
• Internet: GPRS Class 12, EDGE Class 12, HTML web browser
• Quadband
• Size: 115 x 53 x 10.6 mm
• Weight: 106g
• Talktime: 360 minutes
• Battery standby: 300 hours

Motorola ROKR E8 Consumer Reviews

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Average rating from 17 reviews:

Reviewed by John from UK on 27th Aug 2008
A friend of mine has this phone, for which i had the pleasure of using. It is SUPERB! The sound quality is amazing, the build quality is amazing, and the call quality and reception are top notch......all the things that all my Sony Ericssons have been absolutely lousy at. What a welcome change. Moto here i come. In fact i'm buying it next Thursday.
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Reviewed by Sam from United Kingdom on 25th Aug 2008
If you want you phone to make a statement, Get a motorola ROKR p.s. yea every phones have drawbacks and this one as well for e.g. no 3G and flash lite, but otherwise it is a supermodel when it comes to phones;)
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Reviewed by m from scotland on 20th Aug 2008
its rubbish dont buy it. the screen is way too small!!!!!
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Reviewed by allan from england on 20th Aug 2008
GREAT PHONE EASY TO USE AND WELL PUT TOGETHER
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Reviewed by Rulz from England on 18th Aug 2008
Very Nice
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Reviewed by Alan from Wales on 18th Aug 2008
Screen is a little small but managable. Not entirely sure about the haptics technology? Don't seem to be able to turn it off! Any pointers? Overall i am very happy with this upgrade although i do feel motorola should have stepped it up a gear or two. 3G for faster web browsing would have been nice but then i am nit picking. Menus tend to drag a little but that has been the moto way ever since i started using the original rzr. If you don't want too many toys with the posibility for things to keep going wrong then get this phone. I had the Iphone and sent it back then had the Samsung tocco. Yeah sent that back too.. These phones try to do too much and just can't cope. Back to trusty moto. Camera has no flash but then if ya want good pics get a dedicated camera for less than £100. Music player is fairly straight forward when paired with media player 11. Just drag and drop. On board is 2GB and you can add 4GB card so plenty of memory. Enough for 3000 songs or more if compressed at the correct rate. A cool feature is the talking phone. A stephen hawking sound alike will read you your texts if you want. The scroll wheel is very easy to use. Overall i am very happy with this upgrade and hats off to moto for another solidly built mobile.
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Reviewed by Wayne K from U.K. on 16th Aug 2008
nokia 5310 is cheaper, and better smaller, classic nokia interface with excellent music player and sound quality, also has a 3.5 mil jack on the top and a decent sized screen with a higher resolution and more colours, dedicated music buttons that function in all menus case rested? oh and eduardo, good play there, good play
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Reviewed by Bobby from Scotland on 10th Aug 2008
Had one of these for a few days now and I am loving it. Tried a V8 earlier this year but gave up on it due to the pathetic battery life and memory. This phone solves both those problems and some. Menu is the best I have seen on any Motorola although can be a bit slow, how on earth do the "keys" feel like they move when clearly they dont? Touch keypad that you actually have to press is amazing and works perfectly once you get used to it. This is essentially a pretty basic phone that happens to do the basics brilliantly. Call quality is outstanding and texting is a breeze. It looks great, has enough features to keep me happy and feels built to last. I would not hesitate to recommend this phone for someone who does not need all the bells and whistles of say, a Nokia N series,i.e. phones which constantly freeze and crash!
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Reviewed by Eduardo from USA on 7th Aug 2008
Mr.Unknown is right it's a great phone and here in the U.S when someone calls an inanimate object a he there either crazy or dumb [Editor's comment: Not every user of this website has English as a first language, and we should all be tolerant of minor grammatical errors.]
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Reviewed by bilal from Saudi arabia on 29th Jul 2008
this mobile shape is fine but screen is small which is not suitable with mobile set, other vise it is good looking
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Reviewed by Ash Freeman from England on 23rd Jul 2008
Looks good feels good and works good!I love everything about this phone from the sound quality on calls to the ease of use on the menus!the only gripe i have is the battery doesn't seem to last very long!(Or is it because i am used to a sony ericcson W810i that lasted 5 days?)
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Reviewed by Simon from UK on 21st Jul 2008
I was using an advance version for a few days - it had a few bugs but worked well enough to test. The phone part is great, clear sound & a strong signal. Easy to navigate phone book etc. The camera is mediocre, not bad but at 2mp it's never going to be great. Music sounded good and the standard jack socket at the top is a great idea. I found navigating the music to be a simple idea poorly executed which may have been sorted by the final release. Generally this had the potential to be a very good music phone that could also take quick snapshots.
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Reviewed by unknown from england on 17th Jul 2008
Anthony from croatia... it is not a HE... Stop moaning... this is one of the nicest phones on the market at the moment.!!!!!!!
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Reviewed by Nikhil Skariah from India on 16th Jul 2008
Music is the special feature of this phone.there is great clarity when we hear music through the headset.Also,scroll feature of the phone makes it easy to use.Above all 2GB internal memory and expandable upto 6GB rates this phone superior above all.only problem is battery life is maximum 2 days(music+camera).i wish it would have been little more.
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Reviewed by Neil from USA on 11th Jul 2008
Very nice design. The music and camera features are easy to use, the screen is vibrant, you can use it as an fm radio... and the mp3 player works without the sim card (you can use this as your mp3 player even after you don't want to use it as your phone anymore). My only complaint is that my particular phone keeps trying to sync with t-mobile.com and its keeps doing it every couple of hours which is taking away from my battery life... i'm working with tmobile right now to correct that problem.
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Reviewed by Verbushitel Steiner from Urmam on 8th Jul 2008
Small screen. Utter waste. Am taking back.
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Reviewed by anthony from croatia on 5th Jul 2008
This cell phone is junk. He is ugly, slow and (in Croatia) very expensive!
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Motorola ROKR E8 links