Motorola takes an ingenious approach to the integration of mobile phone and music player with the ROKR E8, which was launched in Dubai last Wednesday.
The phone has touch-sensitive virtual buttons instead of conventional keys and when it's in standby mode the shiny black keyboard is completely blank.
Press a key and the phone comes to life, with the function of each button illuminated in white.
And here's the clever bit. Press the button with a musical note on it and all the phone keys instantly disappear, to be replaced with the controls for the music player. Similarly, if you want to take pictures, the camera controls appear on the keyboard.
Motorola calls this system ModeShift technology and it's a good feature. Also useful is the FastScroll navigation wheel that lets you zip through lists of tunes and contacts. A variety of music formats can be loaded from your PC.
The E8 has plenty of other features. To help you use the virtual controls there is haptics technology – this provides a response when you touch a button that makes it feel like a conventional key, even though it does not really move.
There's a generous 2GB of onboard memory and you can add up to 4GB with a microSD card. The phone is quad band, which is great for frequent travellers. And you can use the Song ID feature to obtain information about tunes as you listen to the built-in FM radio.
Other features are a bit underpowered and creaky – a two megapixel camera, for example, and WAP internet connectivity. And the screen is a bit too small for comfortable browsing
Design is, of course, all a matter of taste but the E8 just doesn't do it for me – it's a little too big and the glossy black finish looks a bit cheap.
But Moto is clearly doing something right as the E8 landed two awards at the gadget paradise that is the International Consumer Electronics Show, the massive trade bash held each year in Las Vegas. It won the prize for best mobile phone or smartphone and the People's Voice award.
I think this Dh1,200 phone would appeal primarily to a music-loving teenager who likes the slick looks and the novelty value of the virtual keys and ModeShift system. And young eyes might even be able to read web pages on that little screen.
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