The phone that the first iTunes phone should have been.

On Friday, I visited my friends over at EportWorld, my local independent GSM mobile phone store here in Washington, DC. They had recently picked up the Motorola E2 that I first played with in January at CES 2006. Knowing that the phone likely wouldn’t synchronize with a Mac out of the box, I thought I’d give it a shot anyways.

Appearances

The ROKR E2 is a small candybar phone, that’s shaped much like a bar of soap after you’ve used it a few times in the shower. It has rounded edges and fits quite nicely in your hand. The materials are all hard plastic, none of the nice rubbery texture from its predecessor, the E398. But that’s okay, not all phones have to be the same—and this one isn’t.

The phone I tested was primarily white. The keypad buttons were a flat silver and the d-pad was a chromed piece of plastic. Because of the E2’s shape, the bottom keys (*, 0, and #) had their edges rounded off, though I didn’t notice that it caused problems for dialing. On the back, the battery cover plate is silver plastic with a checker-textured surface. Above the battery is the 1.3MP camera. There is no external button for taking photos—it’s all done using the GUI.

The sides of the phone are where this phone shines. On the left side are the media player controls. Chromed, fully tactile, and backlit, you’re not going to miss these things. At the top is the volume toggle, and below are the REW, Play/Pause, and FFW buttons with the appropriate symbol on each. The backlight activates when you press them. On the right side of the phone you’ve got a voice-activation button which is backlit much like the other keys. Below that is a Lock button similar to a WalkMan or iPod that more often done in software on other phones. Below that is a port for a full size SD card (a very nice touch) with a white rubber cover, and below that is the USB 2.0 mini port, which remains exposed at all times. The USB 2.0 port is also how the phone is charged.

At the top you of the phone, you have a regular headphone jack. No adapters or proprietary dongles needed. Just plugin your favorite earbuds and go. Why this isn’t standard on music phones, I’ll never know.

The phone didn’t feel expensive, but it didn’t feel clunky like the demo unit I played with back in January. It was solid and felt like a lower-end motorola phone. The design path for this phone clearly wasn’t on the same track as the RAZR phones. It’s more like the shape of the PEBL, without being a flip.

User Interface

As noted before, the Motorola ROKR E2 comes with the new Linux OS that many have been praying for Motorola to replace their current phone OS (which if you’ve read any of my previous reviews, you know I’m not a fan). Looks wise, it’s about the same as the old system. That’s really off-putting, and unfortunate, because in reality, the Linux OS is a big step forward for Motorola.

As you dig thru the menus and options, you can tell that there’s a lot of power and potential in the system. The way the system lets you sort thru and select multiple files in the file manager is the same system that allows you to sort through your contacts. It’s unified and consistent with its processes.

The main menu has the typical options—contacts, recent calls, messages, office tools, games, web access, multimedia, file manager, and settings. One of the most-requested features alone is the contacts app.

Finally, we’re not submitted to the stupidity that was the Motorola contacts app! Individual contacts work just like in the Mac’s Address Book—where one contact can have multiple phone numbers, email addresses, snail-mail addresses, etc. There’s actually a lot of information that the contacts app will store for you, including IM address, the category that the contact was associated with in your Mac’s Address Book, birthday and anniversary dates (which include the ability to be added to the phone’s calendar for reminders), even the contacts sign of the zodiac (huh?!). You can associate photos to a contact, along with special ringtones. The main contacts interface is simply a list of names with the first bit of contact information associated with them (a phone number or email address). Hover over a name by scrolling up or down on the d-pad, and when you find one you want, scroll right or left for the bit of contact info you’re looking to use. It works a lot like contacts on a Sony Ericsson phone, except without the GUI polish (which really is just a matter of a skin). It’s light-years ahead of previous Motorola phones and it works quite well.

Recent calls and messaging work as you might expect—messaging allows for both POP and IMAP emails, as well as the mobile standbys of SMS and MMS. Office Tools include the typical list: calculator, calendar, email (why this is in there twice?), alarm clock, world clock, task list, and notes. The one additional app in Office Tools was MOTOSYNC that enables the ROKR E2 to synchronize via the SyncML spec. When attempting to set this up, the phone was pre-supposing an Internet server running the SyncML protocol, so that didn’t work with iSync on the Mac because that’s not how it’s initiated. However, knowing Mac and Motorola’s long-standing iSync tradition, I am confident that a solution exists. What I found interesting was that the ActiveSync option found in the CES version of the phone was not to be found. Hmm.

So how did I add contacts to the phone? Linux to the rescue! The contacts app on the E2 allowed me to import vCards—like those that export from the Mac’s Address Book. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t accept group cards, so I had to export my selected vCards one by one, but it wasn’t a big deal. What was really nice was that I could simply do this to an SD card and then pop it into the phone to be imported. I could also use the phone’s USB 2.0 connection itself to drop files on the SD card. It was just as fast as loading songs onto the iPod because of the fast 2.0 interface.

The games on the phone were pretty lame. This phone was meant for the Asian market, so they were labeled with foreign lettering that I couldn’t read. The first game was a car racing game where you drive an Audi TT convertible, reminiscent of the old SEGA Out Run. The second game was a billiards game that played loud Lynrd Skynrd music at the intro. The last game wasn’t really a game, it was a dictionary.

Web access is done thru an older version of the Opera Browser—version 8 I believe. The phone didn’t support EDGE, and I wasn’t really willing to tolerate the GPRS speeds, so I didn’t bother setting it up for Cingular.

File manager works as you might expect, giving you easy access to files on the phone as well as the SD card. It allows you to display and sort files and folders in a bunch of different useful ways: list, details, thumbnail, preview pane (very useful for images and video, but not audio), and by name, date, size, and type.

In the multimedia menu, the media finder application does as its title describes. I’m undecided as to whether I should be happy it works well, or disappointed that the phone doesn’t just find files automatically. The camera app works much like a traditional Motorola camera does—as previously noted, there’s no dedicated shutter button, but then again, this is just a 1.3MP camera phone. Video camera is listed as a separate app, however you can get to it from the camera app, and vice versa. Voice recorder also does what it says without artificial limits, as long as you have enough memory, you can record audio to your heart’s content.

The FM radio worked quite well, but only when the headphones were plugged in as it uses the chord as an antenna. Stations tuned in clearly and the seek feature worked well. Unfortunately, unlike other phones on the market, there was no auto-detection of the station’s name or of the tracks played. The phone allows you to save 50 stations as ten presets in five different sets of “FM Bands.” The live FM radio was a nice alternative to pre-recorded music or podcasts.

Not listed in the menu is the voice-activation application, which is tied to the dedicated button on the side. I was shocked at how well this worked, without training for my specific voice or any specific contacts in my phone. It figures it out all phonetically, and it works quite well, even with names that aren’t spelled like they’re said, like my wife’s name, “Magi.” There are a bunch of commands you can give, like, check battery, check email, or to call a specific person—just say their name.

Conspicuously missing is an iTunes application, even though the front of the phone clearly has a button with the green iTunes eighth-notes. When you press the button, the interface takes you to the My Media application which gives you the ability to play songs from playlists, sort by artists, by album, recently played, composers, genres—hmm, sounds a lot like the iTunes mobile or even the iPod interface, huh?

Regardless, listening to music was what this phone is all about. Although it doesn’t synchronize your music via iTunes, you can easily use the USB or the SD card to load on music for playback on the go. Just push the Play/Pause button on the side, select your given playlist (which you’ll have to create), or sort as previously noted above. After you’ve selected the songs, you have the option of leaving the player interface loaded, or just by pushing the call end button, you can be taken back to the main screen, with a mini-media player loaded at the bottom of the screen.

I tend to listen to long podcasts more than I listen to music, and I found the ROKR E2 to work well for this purpose. The media player lets you fast-forward or rewind effortlessly—unlike any other media player on a phone. The volume toggle when held down in either direection similarly glides the audio up or down. It just works like a portable audio device should. When you’re done picking your song, simply flip the lock key, and drop the phone in your pocket. That’s it.

As for playing video, I tried playing back a Make Podcast video which is in the MP4 format. The ROKR E2 played the first few frames and then replied with a message saying the frame rate was too high. Bummer, but points to the GUI for at least telling me what was wrong.

Likes and Dislikes

The GUI for the ROKR E2 is a big improvement over older Motorolas, however, it’s not as nice looking as others. It works well and the controls are logical, for a change. With it being linux, hopefully Motorola will soon have some GUI hackers create some nice looking skins, and maybe some impressive apps.

The improvement to the contacts app is to be applauded.

The voice command application is quite good, working better than even the voice command system on the Motorola MPx220.

The media player on the ROKR E2 works well, mostly because of the dedicated, tactile buttons on the sides, the standard headphone jack at the top, the standard and inexpensive SD media format, and the fast USB 2.0 connection. All of these are big improvements over the E398 and the original ROKR E1.

Unfortunately, it’s almost as if this phone were designed last year or the year before. It’s all quite functional and works well, but you just wonder why we’re just now seeing it. Without advanced features like EDGE data, an updated version of the Opera browser, or a RDS channel name support in the FM radio.

But actually, that’s not a new complaint about Motorola phones. Design-wise, the RAZR, SLVR, and even the upcoming KRZR and RIZR are quite nice on the outside. Functionally their fine, but they’re not forward looking or even have nice GUIs to drool over. If Moto would spend half as much time on the GUI skin and screen transitions as they do with the external hardware, they’d be unbeatable.

The ROKR E2 works well as a music phone with the dedicated buttons, standard media and headphone jack, and fast USB 2.0 transfer speeds. It’s what the first iTunes phone should have been—the real question is, is it enough over a year later?