“The Motorola Rokr mobile faces an almost impossible task. It has to live up to the hype generated by the news that Apple was getting involved in the phone business,” Alfred Hermida reports for BBC News. “At first glance, there is little to suggest that the design gurus at Apple were involved in the making of the device. The Motorola mobile is no iPhone. There is no click-wheel on the front, no hard drive to store thousands of songs and no fast connection to transfer songs from the computer. The Rokr is simply the first mobile phone which plays music via Apple’s iTunes software. This is significant in itself, as four out of five people who buy music online in the UK use the iTunes music store.”

“Transferring songs from one device to another is easy using the iTunes software, though this can take a long time,” Hermida reports. “For some reason, the phone uses USB 1.1 rather than the faster USB 2.0 to connect. This is a serious shortcoming as other music mobiles offer much shorter transfer times… Once the lengthy task of getting music on the phone is over, listening to the tunes is simplicity itself.”

Hermida reports, “Compared to other music mobiles available in the UK, the Rokr falls short. It should be able to hold more music, let you buy songs directly online and use these as ringtones. Perhaps this is the key point. By UK standards, the Rokr feels like yesterday’s phone. It may fare better in the US, where handsets have tended to be somewhat basic and lacking in the many functions taken for granted in other parts of the world.”

Full article here.

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