Gizmodo: e8

Lightning Review: Motorola ROKR E8 Music Phone

Adrian Covert — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:00:00 EDT

The Gadget: The Moto E8 ROKR is a candybar music phone that makes use of a touch-sensitive, haptic feedback panel on the bottom half of the phone. It's nearly buttonless, save for a few on the side.

The Price: $199 (after 2-year contract)

The Verdict: Long story short, the hardware is great, the music interface is decent, the T-Mobile interface sucks. But let's start with the good. Not only do I like build quality, and how the button layout changes according to the phone's function, I also like that the haptic feedback really feels like the phone has buttons (Herrman is still convinced there aren't haptics). As a music player, the capacitive ring and menu system give it an iPod sort of feel, which is nice. It's pretty easy to use, and doesn't suffer from much lag. Syncing with Windows Media Player is a relatively painless process, but that means it's also Windows only (Mac Users have to transfer files via MicroSD, ugh).

The thing that makes me never want to touch the phone again is T-Mobile's UI skin, which takes competent phone software and turns it into a laggy, unresponsive pile of crap. Seeing as this phone is a T-Mo exclusive, I think it's important to highlight how much I dislike it. Frequently I try to enter into a menu for the camera, or text messages, only to be thrown back to the MyFaves home screen. After hitting another button in response, the phone decides it wants to go to the app I was originally trying to use, and then respond to my subsequent button pushing. The dialog boxes also like to clash with the menus, which allow for frequent input errors. I liken the process to playing voicemail tag with someone, which is to say it's totally annoying.

Other than that, it's just slow, the capacitive ring is no good for navigating the main menu, and trying D-pad feels cramped. So while I think the phone is an above average candybar, I'd hold out for a version running different software.

Kojinsha's New E8 Is Tablet Competitor for EEE PC

Kit Eaton — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 06:18:50 EST

Clearly aiming for the same market as the EEE PC, Kojinsha's new E8 UMPC has the added bonus of being a touchscreen tablet. It does, however, beat me how the Korean-made E8 is being labelled by some as a UMPC—it looks more like a sub-notebook to me.

The E8 runs Windows XP, has an AMD Geode LX800 CPU under the hood along with a 40GB hard drive, and its seven inch screen has 1024 x 600-pixel resolution. It's also got stereo speakers, a single USB port, memory card slot (we don't know what sort) and apparently 3.5 hours of battery life. Sounding like quite a competitor for the little Asus, the E8 is available Februrary 29th for about $600. [Aving.net]

FCC Leaks Details on the Motorola ROKR E8

Adam Frucci — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:10:58 EST

The FCC has just leaked details on the heretofore unannounced Motorola ROKR E8. The candybar phone has an illuminated touch keypad that disappears when not in use, making the thing look totally buttonless save the control wheel up top. It's got haptic feedback of some kind, and it also has "a landscape display, micro-USB port, sliding key lock switch, camera, stereo Bluetooth, EDGE data and a microSD memory card slot located under the battery cover." Good times. [PhoneScoop]

Moto Rokr E8 Has Backlit Nubs For Keys

Jason Chen — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:15:06 EDT

These first shots of the Motorola Rokr E8 from zol.com.cn shows the unique keypad that Moto went with. Instead of regular keys, they've got little nubs that need to be back-illuminated. When you're dialing, all the keys are lit; but when you're playing music, the numbers are dimmed and only the music controls are bright. This could be even greater if the keys' backlit images could change in the background, but it doesn't seem like the E8 is advanced enough to do that. [Zol.com via IDNES via Phonearena]