Engadget @ Motorola's ROKR E1 launch
posted Sep 8th 2005 11:40AM
So we hit up that MOTOROKR event last night—yeah, that's what they were calling the launch party they threw for the
ROKR E1 phone we know you're dying for us to drop
another 400 posts on. We tooled around with the little bugger for a little while; read on if you're at all interested
in our impressions of the whole thing, which by this point in the game we wouldn't exactly blame you if you
weren't.
Moto definitely went all out on the music angle for the event. Besides the celebrity packed commercial (no pun
intended), they'd plastered photographs of everyone from Madonna to Iggy Pop to ?uestlove to The Bravery all over the
place. All the devices were in phone booths, or phone booth style booths, har har.
So anyone who’s ever held a Motorola E398 more or less knows what to expect from the experience of playing with a ROKR E1. Really, same thing. It’s a moderately small, light, and sturdy feeling device. We’ll try and save our whining about the severe lighting issues the venue had on a phone that already obviously doesn’t photograph that well, but the shots we have should suffice until we get a proper review of the thing up.
Honestly, iTunes on the E1 (what they’re calling their iPod-like music interface) was not but slow and unresponsive on the two units we played around with. Moving back and forth through artists and menus while the music was playing caused some ugly lag, as did even doing simple things like changing the volume.
Generally everything felt in place for the music interface, however. It wasn’t immediately clear how to do really simple things like pause the music or skip or rewind since there aren’t any hard keys for those features, but it was definitely a usable device.
It’s not super easy to tell here, but we can confidently say that getting the SIM and MicroSD cards out was an
unbelievably painful experience, one that almost made us lose our cool. Granted, the design of the E398 remained
largely unchanged for the ROKR E1, so it’s not like we were terribly surprised by this or anything. Still, if they’re
going to hit us with that 100 song cap on the in-phone
iTunes library, they might as well have at least made it easier to access the, um, removable memory.
Before we took off (but as The Juan MacLean were opening for Common), we took a moment to hit up our man Ed Zander,
who was chilling with Geoffrey Frost, Senior VP of Moto Marketing. What’d we get out of them? Well, not much, honestly,
but they have an 18-month (minimum) ROKR product-line roadmap (no surprise there). We also got the distinct impression
of ambivalence about working with Apple, especially when we queried about how they feel about the fact that they won’t
necessarily be the only handset maker to license iTunes for mobile phones. Go fig.
Yes the Moto ROKR is lame. However this was the easiest way for Apple to get into the market right now. Hopefully in the future we will see a more solid and unique product that is actually an iPod phone (or iPhone mind you). Until then I don't see this specific unit doing so well.
The Moto people are absolutely furious that Jobs debuted the Nano at the same time as the ROKR. Every review of the event is the same, Nano looks great, ROKR looks like too little too late.
This has product bomb written all over it.
My 1 year old Nokia 6230 is way, WAY better than this junk. 100 song limit? Providers sure love shooting themselves in the their feet...
This thing is a hideous error.
Apple should have hooked up with Nokia.
The N91 has iTunes written all over it. I pity the fools at Apple.
wait, so who else has licensed apple to use their itunes software on their phones? Nokia? SonyEricsson? Samsung? Spill the beans Pete/Ryan!
Motorola continues to underpower their phones. Remember the MPx200? They got the CPU power up on the 220 but let Cingular screw around too much.
There are multiple issues at play.
1. Cingular forces manufacturers to let them test everything for months before giving the green light.
2. Motorola is not aggressive with hardware (e.g. CPU) requirements.
3. If Motorola wants to take this seriously, make concessions to APPLE. Let APPLE spec the O/S and config.. might be the best thing to happen to Moto in the long term.
Nokia has no intention of partenering with Apple! Neither SonyEricsson! how can they do that when they have "WALKMAN" mobile!
I have not read a decent review of this thing yet. People want to like this phone just because it's from Apple. I really have a feeling it will suck. The Moto phone OS sucks... this is not even an Apple media player in the phone. All this is is an interface that looks like an ipod and a sync to iTunes. If this product really made long term sense for Apple, why would they cap the song limit at 100 no matter what size card you have in the phone. Really lame. Nothing innovative at all. Apple is finally beginning to stretch its brand too thin with partnerships that do not deliver Apple quality and cannibalize its existing products just to stay ahead of the competition. The only way this product is even being convered is because it is from Apple and they decide to hold a stupid press event.
BTW "Here we go again" what is Apple referring to? The Nano or the Phone??
I don't know how Moto can be furious at Apple, they knew at the outset of the announcement that Apple would be dropping far more than just the ROKR. How?
Well first off, Apple mandated advertising exclusivity for Wednesday and told Moto that they couldn't do any mass media until Thursday. If it was just going to be ROKR then Apple would have been fine with a two-pronged media blitz.
Secondly, Moto HAD to know things were going down (and with lack of an iPod Mini update and recent liquidation promos (back to school - $150 credit...) that there were new 'Pods coming before the holidays, especially after SPJ cancelled the Keynote at the Expo in Paris. . .
It's on Moto & Cingular now to crank up the hype machine (which they will starting today - newsprint & broadcast). Apple's stake in this is just the interface and iTMS sales, not the hardware.....
It looks smaller in person. You guy or girls should see it first.
Just to clear things up, the 100 song limit is on the iTunes app. The standard MP3 app, same as on the e398, is not limited to 100 songs. The 100 song limit is imposed by Apple so as not to compete with iPod sales. They would never license the app to a device with 4GB storage like the N91 because it would directly compete with the minis.
That "here we go again" line from the invite was definitely referring to the nano. If you watch the keynote, the reference becomes more clear. Basically, Jobs referred to the invite when he was talking about the size of the nano and how much smaller it was than the original iPod, but that it held just as many songs. He also made some references to his jeans and how the nano fit in his tiny front pocket vs. the regular pocket. I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere...
I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed that this phone is not on the list of phones that work with the Mac iSync program? The only reason I would buy it is if I could sync my contact/datebook info to it as well as my music. I could live with the 100 song limit that were the case.
If you never had the phone in your hand, its premature to say that it will be a piece of junk. The whole intention of the Rokr is to be succesful as a Phone first as a music player second (via iTunes interface). If the integration works well, I think they have what they intended to do with the Rokr. To add more songs to a phone will only take away sales from the iPods. Steve is also testing the cel phone waters as a way of escape in case the cel phone mp3 market booms and evidently replaces carrying 2 devices. Some photos I have seen for the Rokr are not impressive, but some I have seen from other sites make it look better. We all know that Apple is king in innovation and design, but Motorola design this phone to be as simple to use as possible. If it is in fact simple, then they were succesful at it. Lets hold our horses on the Rokr until we actually have touched, played, listened to one. Who knows, it might just work.
Well, considering the phone lacks bluetooth, I don't think you'd be able to sync with iSync.
#11, I've been wondering the same thing with Isync, especially with it's limited bluetooth capabilities....
Lets make a phone that uses apple software but not let it connect to other apple products... idiots...
Last novemeber, I bought an e398 from one of the many 3rd part stores here in NY. I got Cingular service yet because my phone model wasn't on the Cingular product line, I had very little support trying to get it up & running w/Cingular's MEdia Net. It took me some months, yet Google-ing back & 4th, with the help of lots of kool techs out there, I finally got it set-up properly. So now folks...howcome It feels like a slap in the back of my head when I learn that the freaking ROKr looks exactly like the Moto e398??!!?! And why can I not shake this feeling that, for all I went through with getting my e398 set-up on the Cingular service (with lack of support)... why does it feel like somebody owes me a doggone ROKr??!!??!
The phone does not lack bluetooth, at least not the version Cingular has on their website.
Motorola only have themselves to blame. Who wants a phone that looks like the ROKR? Its fugly, to say the least. Of all the Motorola phones, people want the RAZR (myself included). The RAZR needs to be the phone packed with 256 and 512 megs and iTunes compatibility, not crippled with its currently weak 5 megs of memory and lack of iTunes.
On the other hand, Apple needs to relax their fear of phones cutting into sales of the Shuffle. Sell Apple branded TransFlash for future iTunes compatible phones and include a few downloads from the iTunes store with them. That's a way to muscle out Sandisk and others from that market.
where is the slvr? thats what i want to know. how can you look at the razr line of phones, then look at this hunk of plastic and be aesthetically satisfied. I think it is more desirable to have two nice looking devices (the razr, ipod nano) than one chunky one to replace it (ROKR).
No!
I just moved to New York and there's a product launch across the block ... and I missed it!
Where do NYC geeks go anyways? Not NYU, I suppose.
FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE>>>>>>>>>I have played with the ROKR for about 3 hrs now and it quite a solid phone. Regardless of any negative reviews this thing is a fine use of the mobile phone and itunes match up. It has a GREAT feel and is fun to use. Get to a corporate CINGULAR store and try it out for yourself or wait until a bunch of your friends are playing there music through the built in STEREO speakers to entertain you!!
Mobiledia has a review up at http://www.mobiledia.com/reviews/motorola/rokr-e1/page1.html
Competition or not, the 100 song cap kills this idea completely. It turn the idea of convergence into a gimmick. OK, so obviously convergence would directly eat into iPod sales, but that's the point isn't it? Why else buy an iTunes phone?
My iPod works perfectly well and so does my phone. The only reason I would buy an iTunes phone would be to carry one less device. This aint it. And if Apple aren't prepared to commit to that, then the iTunes branding of a phone just damages the brand to no good effect.
FIRST ADD TO AIR THURS NIGHT DURING THE FOX SEASON PREMIER OR THE O.C.
@#22: The review states that it [the rokr e1] won't accept .mp3 file formats to play for use in iTunes. I don't understand? That doesn't make sense to me. So i HAVE to use iTunes formated mp3s or can i just, like a standard mp3 player, just drag and drop the music on the transflash via the usb cable and do it that way? Also i hear there's a way to "bypass" the 100-song limit by using the other .mp3 player in the phone which came from the former model that this phone was based on? *confused*
can anyone tell me that was there, if they gave out anything at the party like flyers or postcards with madonna on it?
Thanks
I think this is a trial intermediate model, its purpose is merely a foothold.In these times of change i often think the internet and forums are way ahead in dreams and solutions before the tooling and software can catch up. Obviously i hope pocket osx will exist someday in a phone with wifi and a 4gb harddrive. Alternatively could the nano be later docked with a motorolaphone add on system with the nano dialling from address book ? Now im dreaming
NOTE: This is an iTunes phone, not the iPod phone.
I have owned the e398 for more than a year now.
It is Bascially the the same phone. I love this phone.I have over a hundred songs and the sound is comparable to any other mp3 device I have used . Anyone who has not personally seen this phone or used it can't actually comment on it.It takes lots of abuse.Is very solid and fun to use. It has it's not perfect,But it does the job it was designed to do, which is integrate a phone and mp3 device.
I have the phone an feel it is ok. I like the iTunes option. Podcast playing works just fine.
The iSync does not work. Very odd, very bad. I think it worked with the e398 but it must be a configure option that iSync needs. I hope they update iSync to allow syncing.
MP3 incompatible?
The review at Mobilemedia says "Unfortunately, only iTunes formatted files are allowed, so other file formats (like MP3s) will prompt: "File has unidentifiable information. Delete?"
Does this mean the ROKR won't play any MP3 files at all?????
Look, Motorola is on shaky ground being pissed at Apple or Jobs. First, the product has to fair for itself in the open market and ROKR ain't goning to be saved by being on the stage itself. If anything, it can only be helped by sharing the spolight with Nano. Second, who can buy a ROKR? I can go out anyday of the week and buy a Nano without someone checking my cell phone phone contract and terms and conditions of my status as a consumer. When are the manufacturers going to realize how screwed they are trying to make distinctive products by the balkanization of the marketplace when it comes to phones? On payday, when I have a few extra hundred dollars in my pocket, am I going to go out to make an impluse buy for a cool phone. NEVER! I can't even get my cell provider to sell me the phone I want because they suck. And they ALL suck!
it shouldn't be compared to ipod since they're not the same. do you really think apple would want a phone directly competing with shuffle or nano?
i find this phone ok already, considering the superb sound quality. although the usb1 and .3 mp cam would leave you wanting more...but hey...im not complaining. love the phone!
Its a great phone it does everything i want it to.
its the cheapest way to get a good working new apple ipod nano/mini.