Motorola E1060: the first iTunes-capable phone
Well, we’re going to have to wait til quarter 4 to actually get our hands on this puppy, but the first iTunes-compatible phone has been announced by Motorola. The E1060 3G cell phone will carry a “limited, but as yet undefined” number of songs, include video download and playback functionality, color display, two-way video calling, dedicated internet browser keys and a 1.3-megapixel camera.
The phone will also have Bluetooth connectivity (yay!) and come stock with 32MB of internal memory, plus the ability to expand up to 512MB with TransFlash removable storage. But here’s the catch: the phone supports MPEG4, WMV/WMA and MP3 formats… which means music purchased from the iTMS won’t play on it without conversion! What?! Did some Apple exec sleep through the format decision meeting? :)
You know, at first I was excited about this phone. Now my hunch is that by fourth quarter, it may be coming too late. With companies like Orb Networks coming online with the idea of streaming my entire media collection to my phone, and with Motorola itself developing iRadio to do something similar… I would rather have that than be stuck with another 512MB capacity music player. If I were just in the market to buy a new phone (which I’m not, I just bought two) it might be cool, but eight months from now, I’m not so sure it will be compelling enough to make me want to buy a new phone.
