Positioned as a music phone, the E8 model belongs to the ROKR product line, but in real life it appears to be more of a fashion phone (mind the backlighting keyboard effects, the materials used for the body and the overall design theme). A certain association with Nokia 8600 Luna arises, where the semi-transparent keyboard shield combined with the ghostly keyboard backlighting in turn made a subtle reference to Motorola E8. However we aren't about to say that Motorola are trying to sell a fashion phone disguised as a music-oriented one - all the musical features of the model are on a level high enough to be able to compete with the majority of same-class handsets bearing the music label. A quality music phone given the guise of a fashion phone apparently is a much better thing than an obviously non-music solution sold in the guise of a full-fledged music device. For instance, all the latest models from the Walkman music series developed by SonyEricsson utterly fail both in audio quality and ergonomics when it comes to comparisons with competitive products, clearly inferior to what other companies offer at comparable prices. Some of those losers, however, could have made decent fashion phones if positioned as such. In this case incorrect positioning brings more harm than good, but the current Motorola case we're about to cast the spotlight on is clearly not the case.

So, the E8 model successfully combines an exquisite design and a well-implemented audio system. Well, a music phone naturally ought to be good at audio tricks and offer a high quality of sound, but when it comes to an audio phones displaying additional virtues like the unique design and materials, that's a quite more interesting story.

Motorola succeeded in their risky experiments with altering the product design. The new E8 features a semi-transparent, absolutely smooth and solid front panel. The chips beneath are partly visible, all the buttons have their borders visibly outlined even when they stay inactive. The ergonomics of such an exotic solution will receive a most thoroughful examination a bit below since it's among the most interesting features about this handset.

What's the right way of positioning E8 among fellow products within the respective product line? Judging by its music-phone status and the model index suggesting its place somewhere near the top, we'd say that it will enter the market as an expensive, highly ranking and in a way elitarian gadget. It displays little to no common heritage with the rest of the ROKR series, standing far aside from its less noble brethren. Most likely it will lay foundation to a new generation of future Motorolas basing on the well-tuned variety of technical tricks found in the prototype. The future UIQ-based smartphone codenamed Texel, for example, is seen as the substitute for E8 which will carry over a lot of features from its ancestor. The E8 model is the first to feature the Morphing technology. Only theoretical comparisons to other music phones like Nokia 5310 are possible, in real life the design difference is so significant that the target audiences hardly meet.

MOTOROKR E8 General Specifications

Supported Networks	GSM 850/900/1800/1900, EDGE class 12
Storage:	2 Gb of onboard user memory,a microSD slot (SDHC supported), a 2Gb card bundled
Screen:	2.0", 240x320, 262K colors
Connectivity:	USB2.0, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR (A2DP supported)
Camera:	2 Mp (up to 1600x1200)
Battery:	Li-Ion, BK60, capacity - 970 mAh up to 5 hours of talktime up to 300 hours of standby
Dimensions:	115x53x10.6mm
Weight:	100 g
Estimated price:	€300

MOTOROKR E8 is a unique product which can be adequately credited by but a few people. Design being a purely personal preference, the opinions split wildly. Some are repelled by the looks and teh size, and some say it's very attractive and original. The color scheme is quite neutral, it doesn't sport any grotesquely shaped elements either. The elegant outline of the metal casing produces the impression of a fashion phone. In some way it's close to Apple iPhone in the ideological sense.

It's hard to say whether E8 will make a bestseller. Most likely now, mainly due to the high level of controversy. When there's no unanimity about a product, the less sophisticated customer prefers to say no. An average casual buyer who doesn't pay much attention to the unique design or keyboard functionality won't feel much appeal towards it. The lack of the more obvious features like a big screen or a powerful camera can't be compensated by the more subtle enhancements - as long as it comes to the mass market. Quite to the contrary, those who are looking for a flexible and powerful software platform with a pronounced accent on the audio side are sure to love it.

Design and ergonomics

MOTOROKR E8 utilizes the candy bar form factor, the dimensions appear rather standard at the first glance. The thickness isn't excessive and the length is comparable to Nokia 6500 classic, but the width is a bit too big - 53 mm. We can't say that the handset poses any discomfort to the holder's hand, but it seems a bit poorly proportioned especially as compared to its small screen. The screen is horizontally positioned and utilizes the landscape orientation, so the keyboard area is very spacious. Still, there's a lot of charm about this handset's looks and in our opinion it occupies the same chart line with the top Nokias from the 8000 series when it comes to the appearances. The extremely high quality of materials used only augment this feeling further. The surface of the casing gives the hand a solid feel of the unique texture that you can hardly mistake for anyhting else. The handset is imbued with a sort of genuine elegance and this is more than just words. As a fashion phone, the E8 model is no compromise but a full-fledged piece of fashionable hi-tech just like the 'more properly positioned' fashion handsets. The functionality, however, is much higher than that of a regular fashion phone.

The build quality is ideal, the slight play between the casing and the battery cover was no more than a small nuisance found in the early prototype we've been testing, but the finalized serial version will be delivered from it. As for the rest of parts, the body of the phone feels almost seamsless and produces a monolith feeling. There are strong associations with Motorola V8. The materials, the colors, the rounded outline, the shape of the buttons - everything bears strong resemblances. At the same time, E8 retains a unique charisma.

The casing framework and the side pieces are made of metal with chrome coating, the same materials are used in Motorola RAZR V8, even the color is the same. The coating is resistant to wearing. The wet asphalt color looks really becoming to the whole concept. The back panel is also metallic, but with a soft touch coating to prevent scratching and worn spots. The front panel is a smooth, semi-transparent plastic plate, the backing beneath is of a black color. As we have already mentioned, this approach to design sees it as natural that under certain angles some of the inner hardware components like the keys' base pads and the chips can be seen through. However in this case, the basement for the chip is the back surface of the membrane-based (pseudo-touch) keyboard. The keyboard construction will be discussed a bit further, and now it's worth noting out that the face panel hosts a LED light indicating the Bluetooth activation status and the luminance sensor adjusting the brightness levels.

The upper age of the casing hosts the wrist band holder and the 3.5 standard headset jack protected by a plastic gag. On the right side of the casing resides the microUSB slot, also covered with a flab. This type of USB slot became the standard for all Motorola and Nokia phones, and a variety of compatible accessories are expected to appear soon on the store shelves. The controls are: the volume/profile change rocker and the camera launch button on the left, and the two-positioned slider on the right. Moving the slider up blocks the keyboard, moving it down acts as Power On/Off. All of the controls are rather comfortable in operation and impressively improve the overall ergonomics.

The device is equipped with an only polyphonic speaker, but its quality is unusually high. The camera module is a 2 Mp one, of a mediocre quality, which is an apparent drawback even for a music phone. The SIM card slot is found just nearby.

Keyboard: FastScroll and Touch Sensors

Keyboard organization is the most interesting aspect of this phone. MOTOROKR E8 enjoys a unique system which allows for key labels to change automatically depending on the menu or application you're currently in. Talking in advance let's note that it's really comfortable. In the regular mode, the key labels are just letters and number as in any other phone, once you switch to the music player you see another set of symbols - rewinding, play, stop and so on. In the camera mode the labels are zoom, gallery, etc. A total of three such modes are available right now, but the future Motorola models are expected to come with more. Imagine a dedicated set of programmable controls for the web browser, file manager, radio, PIm and so on. But that's still something beyound the horizon right now, only to be seen in the future. Anyway even considering the minimal level of implemenation of this feature in Motorola E8, we can't say that it's unsatisfactory - since so far this is the only phone to feature a function like that. Taking in account the musical orientation of this product, the availability of dedicated controls for the player (including the much demanded and so far exclusive to this model only functions as Random Playback On/Off and Repeated Playback On/Off) only adds to the overall score.

Let's see how that works now. The keyboard is fully powered by the touch technology. The surface reacts to the finger pressure and not to the warmth like in some of the Samsung phones. So this type of keyboard can be operated regardless of any factors involving temperature, e.g. while wearing gloves.

If we cast a strong artificial light upon the keypad surface and look at, a number of lighter colored areas occur - these are the the lighting pads powered by multiple circuits running all across the chip. These pads light up, forming the necessary button labels. In addition to the lighting effects, a slight vibration can be felt every time you press a button. Something of the kind could be observed with some of the SonyEricsson phones utilizing a flash-based menu. The vibro feedback was activated every time you moved the selection from one menu item to another. The sensations are roughly comparable to E8. Thus an illusion of real buttons is achieved - every keystroke becomes tactile. It's also interesting to note that the different button labels for the same button never appear on the same piece of surface. The presumption that the there are a few layers hosting overriding lighting pads is errouneous - those are all sitting on the same and only layer.

In addition to the revolutionary keyboard, E8 possesess a very usable FastScroll navigation wheel which allows to scroll through long playlists in a mere instant, navigate through the menus with a single move of the finger and rewind the music tracks easier than ever before. The functionality of this element is much higher than you would guess at the first glance, it greatly surpasses the NaviWheel of Nokia phones in all regards since the latter has only a limited employment in a limited number of applications. The FastScroll functionality is implemented in a most elaborate manner, you get used to it almost in no time, and the navigation through the menus feels comfortable as never before. Only the outer side of the wheel is sensible, the speed and direction of movement matter. If you slide your finger along the wheel's perimeter and stop it abruptly, the rewinding or moving the menu selection will continue. In other words, first you define a direction, then just hold the finger slightly pressed against the surface and the movement continues in the memorized direction as long as you keep the finger pressed.

Combining the innovative control methods with the traditional approach is another smart solution found in E8. The FastScroll control element has an integrated regular navigation button so you can carry out any possible action using it as an alternative if you're unhappy with the wheel. Motorola offers a highly usable solution, you wouldn't want to do without them in applications like the mp3 player.

Battery

The back panel hides a BK60 970 mAh battery underneath. The capacity is sufficient for roughly two days of regular duty cycle (about 40 minutes of talking, two hours of listening to the music, an hour of menu interaction). A quite standard result for a modern cell phone, and is sure to be found sufficient by the majority of buyers.

As a music phone, E8 displays an above than average length of continuous playback cycle. The test sample endured about 15 hours in total. The latest competitive solutions generally display slightly better results (Nokia 5310, W880i - about 16 hours), but the difference doesn't matter too much. It's also expected that the finalized serial version of E8 will have a longer battery cycle.

MOTOROKR E8 Main Specifications

Model	MOTOROKR E8	Nokia 5310
Regular Duty	2 days	2,5 days
Multimedia Cycle, video (3GP)	3:58	3:34
Multimedia cycle, audio (MP3)	15:31	18:45

Screen

The device sports a 2'' screen (31x41 mm), the matrix is powered by the TFT technology and has a palette of 262K colors. The most unusual thing about it is that the screen is position horizontally which may lead to an impression of the screen being to small, which is partly true when you compare it to the overall dimensions of the device. The horizontal positioning of the screen hardly presents any practicla discomfort and in some cases only makes handling certain functions easier. The resolution is the standard 240x340. Up to eight lines of text can fit into the field of view at the same time. The screen is supported with a mirror backing which helps to minimize the glaring while exposed to the direct sunlight. The screen quality is very high, it's one of the best of its class, the colors are maximally natural and vivid, brighntess level is high. The relatively small size could be a matter of complaints, but in general it's no big problem. The screen brightness and backlighting period are customizable in the options.

The screen of MOTOROKR E8 is mostly identical with that of MOTO U9 both in terms of dimensions and quality, no perceptible difference from MOTO U9 can be felt. The view angles are mazimized, the screen leaves a purely positive impression, the quality of the Sharp matrix is traditionally high. Nokia 5310, for instance, is slightly inferior in quality: the brightness is lower and the colors appear less natural.

Communications

Motorola U9 is a four-band phone operating at GSM 850/900/1800/1900 frequencies, the Class 12 EDGE is supported, the WCDMA support is missing - that's a standard limitation applicable to all devices that make use of the Linux Java platform. Wireless data transfer protocols are represented by Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR. It works just the way it should, - without any problems, - and the options include the on/off status, the list of currently accessible Bluetooth devices, the storage folder customization setting (selectable from the following options: phone memory or memory card), the network name of the device and a number of miscellanous settings. If the Bluetooth mode is active, a correspoding indicator shows up just below the camera lens.

The detection interval is locked on a three minutes' period, that can't be changed. The standby mode features an option granting quick access to the Bluetooth menu and the Bluetooth device detection feature.

While searching for Bluetooth devices, you can specify the exact type of device to look for:

If the All setting is activated, then each detected device will be market with an icon corresponding to the type of that device.

The following profiles are supported:

The wire communication protocol utilized by the phone is the usual USB 2.0, the actual data transfer speed is rather high - on the same level with the V8 model. The microUSB data cable is included in the sales package, however none have been spotted sold separately. The following data exhange modes are suppored:

The Ask Upon Connection setting is missing so you'd better select the desired mode beforehand, you won't be able to set that beforehand. If you're connecting in the Mass Storage mode, only the memory card storage is available.

Voice control & audio quality

Let's check out how well voice control works. Similar to numerous Motorola models supporting this feature, the device has a zero learning curve to adjust itself to the user's voice. Recognitions errors are rather rare, it proved that the phone easily adjusts to all kinds of voices. The application is activated by holding the Dial button pressed for a few seconds. The list of supported commands is rather long, comprising most of the phone's functions. When you are asked for the telephon number to dial or add into the phonebook and the recoginition fails or yields an error, you can say the number once again since the action will only be carried out if the user speaks the acknowledgement command. In addition to the standard set of functions accessible with the voice control, a special setting dubbed Talking Phone comes with the phone as well. Here you can utilize the full power of the speech synthezation engine, for example make it so the phone will pronounce the digits of the number you're looking up in the phonebook - along with the contactee's name once the record is found. The menu and submenu titles can also be pronounced, the SMS and E-mail messages can be read aloud by the phone itself. The implementation is rather nice, the Talking Phone function is by no means another kitschy addition but rather a useful feature. It enjoys a certain degree of customization that, for instance, allows you to limit it to speaking the phone number only and mute the rest of hints. However some of the aspects of this funtionality are disputable. There are no options customizing the characteristics of the synthesized speech - language selection, speed and so on - everything is fixed. Because of this the feature looks cheaper than the same fucntionality found with some of the Nokia phones like 5500 Sport.

Let's also mention the brand CrystalTalk techology in this chapter; it's implemented in a vast number of the manufacturer's solutions. In fact this stands for a high quality voice rendering and lets you be heard better even in noisy environments. In the beginning the feature was exclusive to the more expensive Motorola products like V8, but now it's used in the budget solutions like W175, W180, W206, W213 and similar ons alike. We were glad to learn that Motorola are going further in the field of user friendly product design - you see, a budget phone whose only main function is to transmit voice over distances is something that would need a feature like that badly and finally it gets it.

The U9 model isn't an exception either, we noticed the enhanced voice signal quality at once and everything was heard well enough not to ask twice even when one was walking along the noisy streets. The CrystalTalk signal processing algorithm adjusts itself to the current environmental noise level; the noisier it is out there, the harder the signal is filtered to extract the wanted signal. The voice signal quality of the U9 and U8 model easily beats competing solutions by other brands, and that's a small victory of Motorola in this particular technical domain.

User interface

Motorola RAZR2 V8 utilizes the Linux Java (LJ) platform, the version number is 6.1 and that's not the latest build so there's a number of differences from the latest 6.3 used for U9, and sometimes these differences are only in favor of the device, ironically. For instance, the menu can be customized, the order of menu items can be changed to the user's liking, the main menu can be expanded with user-created folders, the icons can be renamed. The rest of differences are very slight, they are mainly focused on the arrangement of menu elements and small design features, which isn't that remarkable.

The interface is based of Linux Java - it's actually one of the best solutions in this sphere available on the market today, lacking many limitations found with casual phones. Until recently, the manufacturer was offering a variety of Linux-based solutions in different markets, including E2, E6 and A1200 models, though the operating system was in a number of ways different from what we see with U9. The OS functionality was severely ripped, only Java applications were supported and the installation and usage of Linux-based software was utterly out of the question. However even given these limitations, those models were remarkable for their highly efficient user interface.

The state of things in the smartphone market was clear enough to allow for no ambiguity: the S60-based devices occupied the most part of the market, mainly issued by Nokia yet also found in the portfolios of the Samsun and LG companies. WM-based PDA phones only took a small part of the market due to the small size of their target audience, mostly being businessmen and corporate workers. No mass market, multimedia-oriented WM handsets are known to exist so far. UIQ was acquired by the SonyEricsson company, but it's evident that a single company can't support its full-scaled development on their own, so a few months later SE started offering UIQ share holdings to third parties, Motorola included. For the time being, Motorola are licensees of the UIQ technology, just like the Samsung company - each sold device brings a fixed percentage of the revenue to Nokia and Symbian corporations. Trying to evade the royalties, Motorola took to developing Linux-based phones with a comparable functionality - in the case of the U9 model that's quite justified, the Linux platform has an integrated support for high-frequency Freescale CPUs. Considering the fact that these CPUs are known for significantly lower power consumption rates, the model achieves a serious advantage over the rest of comparable smartphone solutions.

On August, 7, 2007 the Motorola company officially announced MOTOMAGX, the next-gen mobile platform based of the Linux OS. Unlike the previous Linux-based platforms (for instance, EZx) this one will offer a qualitative new level of support for third party applications, which is a huge step forward indeed. This platform is used in all of the new phones by the company, including V8, Z6, U9, E8 and the rest (officially still not announced). Asof today, the platformonly support Java ME applications, but by the first quarter of 2008 widget support will be included along with the Linux application support, which will minimize the gap between the actual offerings and the most ambitious of the customers' expectations. The MOTODEV Studio software development kit now only allows for creating Java applications, Linux and WebUI development plugins will be available by the end of 2007.

The first revision of the MOTOMAGX platform includes such functions as ARM 11 chipset support which stands for a lower energy consumption rate and a higher performance, hi-def screen support, an advanced Contact Book, the easiest media files phone-to-PC synchronization seen so far, support for the PictBridge standard and so one. The biggest attention is paid to personalization and the overal user friendliness of the interface. Of course such an abundance of features imposes certain limitations. So, no 3G support is expected for the Motorola LJ platfrom (at least in the foreseeable future), that's why the product line lacks V8 for LJ and V8 for P2K.

Let's get back to the device description then. During standby the screen is informative enough, the top bar showing indicators for Bluetooth status, currently selected audio profile, missed calls and unread messages, battery charge and signal level. The two dedicated buttons are used to access the functional menus (analoguous to the Active menu found in Nokia phones). The quick menu of U9 comprises the following items:

The current revision of the firmware won't allow changing the order of menu items.

The user interface can be customized with a number of themes, three of which are preinstalled, yet the user is free to customize them further. Also there's an option to build your own theme from scratch by playing with all sorts of settings: pick a wallpaper (any image, camera photos as well), set a template (mosaics, fullscreen), internat screen splashscreen, the power on / power off splashscreens and the font and menu template - colors, style of elements, font size and type, etc. Then you're prompted to specify a title for the newly created theme as well as finalize it by selecting an appropriate set of ringtones, message alert signals, E-mail, voice mail and calendar event sounds.

Sounds can be further customized in the call profile settings - the ones specified upon creating a theme are just default ones. The profile settings offer you a possibility to create an unlimited number of user profiles - though the system won't allow deleting the three preset ones. Four tabs with a few fields in each need filling when you're about to create a create or modify a profile - there you are asked to set the title, ringtone, message alert type (including Melody, Vibro, Combined, Vibro followed by Melody, and Silent), the sound volume (from 1 to 7) and also set the signals for each type of calendar events and reminders.

If you modify a preset theme, you can always switch it back to default; part of the settings of an existing theme can be copied into a newly created theme's template. The theme creation interface is very comfortable. Only the latest Samsung products may slightly overcome Motorolas in terms of theme customization.

Aside from the aforementioned settings, there are options setting the screen backlighting interval, splashscreen duration, brightness (from 1 to 6), switching the clock style (analog / digital) and the quick launch key icons. A similar system is utilized in Nokia phones based of Series 40 3rd eidition, four application icons are displayed on the screen during stadby, each of them corresponding to a direction of the navigation button. The icons can be turned off, and the functions associated with them can be selected from a long list of available applications. Two or more shortcuts to the same application can be bound to different button directions, no limit is observed here.

While running the mp3 player in standby, part of the player window is displayed on the screen, where icons of control elements are shown along with the song title, the name of the performer and the play time. Pressing the navigation button upwards will force the window to its regular size at once, so it's always to easy to control the player and switch songs.

Another handy feature is the automatical phonebook search by the initial digits of a number in the standby mode. This function is to a certain extent similar to the same feature observed with Samsung phones, yet the model in question doesn't look through phone numbers which aren't saved as contacts. If you remember some of the digits of the person's phone number, you can easily look their contact up simply by typing them on the keypad right away - then their contact info will be brought up.

There's no support for multitasking, save for a negligible monority of allowed combinations like web browser + messaging service. The mp3 player can be run in the background as well, but such a feature is common with most modern cell phones today.

Main menu

There are two traditional view modes available for the main menu - icons or list, a toal of 9 icons or list items fall in the field of view simultaneously. Here an obvious difference from the LJ 6.3 is exposed - the spinner menu is missing (unlikein Motorola Moto U9), which usually looks like a line of six small icons bordering the large one placed in the center. The icons are animated and look really nice. You can use the numeric keys to browse through the menu items, the sumbenus only show as lists. There's a possibility to create new submenus in the main menu, rename the existing menu items and arrange the icons in a custom fashion. The customization possibilities offered are something that left us deeply pleased - the mobile devices are becoming increasingly more personal.

The menu makes use of the FastScroll wheel, however that's not suprising since this element remains active in virtually all applications and menus, which is extremely comfortable. At the same time you're free to navigate in the traditional way using the navigation button. The FastScroll method is largely preferable due to the higher comfort and easiness it provides. Nokia N81 utilizes a limited version of a navigation wheel (dubbed NaviWheel) as a control element restricted to a limited use in its mp3 player, gallery and the multimedia menu but nowhere else. Such limitations make little sense, so it's natural to see Motorola's FastScroll whell permanently active in all menus and applications. Besides the FastScroll and the traditional navigation button, the menus also respond to pressing the volume rocker as an acceptable navigation element (though looking a bit exotic and even excessive).

The main menu comprises the following items:

The main menu comprises the following items, please mind it's customizable so the description is only applicable to what you get out of the sakes box:

Call Service

The contact book can be viewed in two modes: list and list with icons. Contacts stored on the SIM card and those from the phone memory can be viewed either separately or on a combined list. In the latter case each contact comes with an icon indicating if it's stored on the SIM or not. To the right from the contactee's name there's also a symbol indicating the phone type (work, home, mobile, etc.). If more than one number are associated with a contact, the default one is shown. You can browse through a person's phone numbers by selecting the corresponding record in the phonebook and consequently pressing the navigation button sideways.

Filtering can be done by:

You can also add custom categories to the list to do filtering by. When you engage the Frequently Dialed filter, the more frequently called people will reside at the beginning of the least and the less attended ones will show at the bottom. The settings include an option to select a number of phonebook records at a time, copy or send them to the SIM card and vice versa, send a message and so on. Sorting by name or surname is possible. The frequently called contact lists can also be reset here (for calls, e-mails and SMS messages)

The speed dial has nothing very special about it, keys from 2 to 9 can be used as shortucts to user-defined phonebook records, the 1 key traditionally serves to access the voice mail server. The contact list supports quick search by the first nine letters of the name or surname.

Upon creating a new contact, the user is prompted to select the storage location - SIM card or the phoen memory. A newly created or edited contact can be given a name and a surname (50 symbol limit for each field), up to four phone numbers (selectable from Mobile, Home, Work, Fax and Misc), an e-mail address, a short text note, a unique ringtone, image or video. Any photo, image or preset icon can be used for the personal contact image. The preset phone number categories can't be renamed, there's no option to increase the maximum number of simultaneously stored numbers per person either, which is a technical limitation. Two e-mail addresses can be stored in a contact record, selectable from the Work, Home and Misc types. The call picture is rather large, occupying about two thirds of the screen. A contact can be associated with any preset or custom user group.

Extra infromation that can be attached to a contact record includes two addresses selectable from the three types, a personal ringtone that will play every time the person associated with it calls, a short text note (or a voice message), personal data sheet, the Zodiac sign. If the Talking Phone feature is active, the device speaks the contactees' names aloud as you browse through the list.

Likewise Samsung and SonyEricsson phones, the birth date is automatically transmitted from the contact record to the calendar, and the user is prompted to specify the preliminary reminder period - one day before, two days, a week in advance and so one. Once you mark an Anniversary type event in your calendar, the same option becomes available. That's really very useful if you're forgetful about presents.

Up to 1000 contacts can be stored in the phonebook, which is frankly speaking is more than enough for the majority of users. You can create custom groups to place the contact records in, each group can be set to have a unique ringtone and call picture. The maximum number of groups is limited to ten, up to 20 persons per group. Contacts and business cards can be sent over SMS, MMS, E-mail and Bluetooth.

The call log stores all the call records comprising dialed, received, missed and frequently performed calls (up to 20 records per category). The summary list comprises all the types of calls, the individual call type is indicated by a small icon for each call. Switching between the logs is done by pressing the navigation button sideways, that reminds of Nokia and SonyEricsson phones. Any number can be extracted from a call record and associated with an existing contact record from the phonebook, or saved in a new contact record.

Each call record stores useful information regarding the date and time of call, the duration, etc. There are the stats timers showing the overall incoming and outgoing call time, data traffic counters and so on.

On the whole, the phonebook and the call service are just as good as they should be - at least no worse than with the popular Nokia and Samsugn solutions, we're sure really very few people are going to ever get disappointed with what Motorola has to offer with the model.

Messaging service

Following the established tradition, the device utilizes a combined messaging system and defines the type of the message judging by its contents. An SMS to which a picture is added automatically converts to the MMS type. Message templates are available, you can customize the existing ones or create a nymber of your own - that's very useful regarding the ability of the phone to send such template response while the casing is closed, with the help of the exterior screen. So you can always send a 'I'm busy, darling' mesage right in the middle of a gunfight because you don't even have to open the phone. Besides the text templates, there are a number of MMS templates that can also include images and autio files.

The maximum number of messages is solely limited by the amount of free memory, just like with the rest of Symbian-based smartphones. A separate messaging log is available, looking much like the call log. You can always choose a recently contacted person and send another message to them suing this list. If your SMS messaging is locked on a close circle of people, you can always use that to look your contactees up instead of using the phonebook. A message can be sent either to a single person, a few persons or a bunch of carbon copies can be dispatched to a whole contact group. If you're sending a message over to a number of people, their exact number is to be specified alongside the small icon to the left from the adressee field.

The list allows for custom folder to be added by the user, or move and arrange the items in a custom fashion. The message list also displays info about the delivery dates, the name and the number of the contactee, and a short piece of the message text. Messages can be sorted by one of the four criteria: date, sender, size and storage location (SIM / phone memory)

Upon creation of a new text message, the text input mode can be selected from a number of options - you can switch between using the context menu or the # button. Options include automatical word input based on the initial letters of the words that you type manually, - the phone can learn and extend its vocabulary, which is a normal feature for a present-day mobile device; the traditional text input with no automation features; special symbols and digits; switching between the available input languages is done by pressing the * button. Getting back to the vocabulary, it's worth mentioning that it sports a number of alternative functioning modes. So, you can set it to guess the word endings all the time or wait and memorize what you're typing and only help completing known letter combinations later.

The message attachment types include photo, video, contact book record, audio, hyperlink - once something like that is attached to the message, it's automatically converted to the MMS type. You can either select a photo or a video from the gallery or transmit it to the message editor right from the camera application. There's no clear message size limit yet an artificial one can be enforced by checking the corresponding option. Possible variants include stirct limitation (which forces the enclosed image to be resized once the message becomes too large), message size alert (you're warned that the size is too big yet no action is taken automatically, leaving that to the user), or the unlimited mode. Once you attach something its actual byte size is indicated, and you can always preview a composed message prior to sending.

The MMS options also include the delivery and read notices, the message expiration date, the number of pages and page timing switch if a message consists of more than one page. Delayed MMS delivery at a customizable interval is something really new and interesting, for example you can have your New Year greetings arranged to be delivered on time a few hours beforehand.

The E-mail service enjoys a sound implementation, the maximum length of an e-mail message isn't technically limited yet you can always turn the optional limitation on. A number of delivery settings are available alongside. For instance, you can set periodical mail checks at a certain specified interval unless you prefer to do that manually; delayed delivery is supported; the mail download options are Headers Only, Message Only or Fixed Fragment (some initial lines from the message, actually a number customizable by the user).

There's an optional limit for listing older messages, the ones deleted from the phone can still be kept at the mail server if the user wishes so. The additional settings include the possiblity of choosing the mode of response (with auto quoting the original post or not), the default address, the signature and so on. The messaging system of the device looks worthy - even if it's not the best implementation of such features on the present-day market, it doesn't yield to the majority of comparable products in this aspect, either. The well-designed interface also contributes to the overall positive impression.

PIM

This feature is titled Office Tools including such applictions as Calendar, World Clock, Calculator, Tasklist and Download Manager.

The calendar application is quite typical of a latest generation product by Motorola, it's indeed very functional. Three viewing modes are supported - by day, by week or by month. If viewed by day, each day is graphically represented as a schedule by the hour, two, three or a half - the interval is defined by the user. The calendar settings include and option to reset the viewing mode parameters back to default, set the number of weekdays, the starting day of the week, the beginning and the ending time of a day.

There 12 event types available, including Meeting, Presentation, Call, Lunch, Anniversary and so on; each event's properties include four tabs: the first one allows to specify event type, subject, location, date, start and end times, reminder interval (how early before the event the alert signal should be played - 5, 10, 30 minutes, an hour, two hours beforehand and so on) and the alert signal (any type of audio and video files, voice records included). The second tab stores a short description of the event; the third holds the list of participants - each of those can be sent a reminder e-mail message provided that you enter the e-mail addresses; if a person has their e-mail address specified in your phonebook, it's automatically inserted in the appropriate field in this tab. The repeat interval for the event is specified in the last tab (daily, monthly, yearly). The interval can also be customized to uneven values like a fortnight, three weeks, etc. Also you have to specify an expiraton date for each event.

The days which have an event associated are marked in the calendar with a special symbol or color, which makes it easier to spot things. Automatical purging of expired events is possible, you have to specify the time interval for that.

Like we said earlier about the contact book, the Date of Birth field is automatically synchronized with calendar and is marked on its proper date, you're prompted then to leave a reminder and specify the date and time of operation. So there's no way to miss your beloved grandma's birthday and you'll be warned beforehand.

The tasklist is rather simple, each task record features the following fields: subject, deadline, priority and a text note. Tasks can be sorted by priority or by deadline date, a shared access can be specified for the list. The viewng mode is also customizable - all the tasks or expired, complete and pending as separate lists.

MOTOSYNC is a menu item bringing you some phone-to-PC synchronization settings where you have to specify your synchronization profile:

The Notes are just notes, acting much like the Notepad applications found in various Windows PC operating systems, but its mobile counterpart imposes a 256 symbol limiation on each note.

The downloads manager is rather simple in the terms of functionality, but that's just a phone would need. It has a log displaying your downloads history, the pause and cancel functions are also accesible from here, each file on the downloads list comes with an icon indicating whether it's stored in the phone memory or on the memory card. Besides the web downloads log, a similar log is available for the Bluetooth dowloads - should a Bluetooth file transfer fail, the phone will display a warning and the file will be marked with a 'broken' icon in the log. So you can always keep an eye on the status of your downloads.

There are three alarm clocks which can operate independently or all activated at the same moment. The settings for each alarm clock include the operating time, the signal (selectable from mp3 songs, voice records and other audio files) and the repetition interval:

The days on which alarm clocks are set receive a red-color highlight (maybe to look more intimidating). Then you have to specify the interval between the continuously occuring alarm signals and the volume. The alarm clock is easily configurable, the three alarm clocks are quite capable of waking up everybody. In addition to the alarm clock configuration menu, a quick menu for setting an alarm in an hour or half an hour in advance is also available.

Preinstalled Software

The device has a standard set of applications on board. Let's begin with games, there are two of them preinstalled - soccer and sudoku. Games sport good graphics and the gameplay itself isn't bad, so it's a fair chance to kill some time during a boring trip. To install a new application, you only have to copy the Jar file to the phone and launch it, then you are prompted to specify the installation folder. There's no support for Java multitasking, you can't run a number of applications at a time.

The world clock function has nothing very special about it, it's just a graphical representation of some three adjacent time zones with corresponding cities indicated on the map.

The voice recorder is notable for a comfortable and easy to use interface, but has a rather limited functionality. There's an option to limit the record length to 60 or 150 seconds or keep it unlimited. Memory cards are supported to serve as storage location to which the records are saved, and, quite expectedly, the integrated phone memory can be used likewise. The default filename is also specified in this menu. The voice recorder can record phone talks, too, the sound quality turns out to be at a level above average. The record can be instantly sent via MMS, Bluetooth or E-mail, or set as a ringtone.

The integrated calculator software works all right, having all the necessary functions from the most basic maths to square roots and such like stuff. The navigation button lets the user choose the function with a small screen prompt showing for what function each of the four directions of the button stands. The calculator is combined with a measures converter which is a traditional tool that serves for conversion of such values as currencies, measures of length, weight, volume, area and temperature.

Browser

The phone is supplied with a Opera ver. 8.50 browser, it's not bad at all, coming with a variety of options:

The bookmark service enjoys a very practical implementation, you can classify your bookmarks and place them in custom folders, sorting by name and date is present, there are three viewmodes: list, list with details, thumbnails.

You can simultaneously work with the browser and manage your messages. A really good addition is the option to select custom content from an opened page and save it to a specified location (memory card, onboard sotrage). You can instantly set a picture from a web page to be the screensaver logo or the wallpaper, attach it to an automatically composed message and so on.

Opera Mini remains the preferable option for the majority of users by now, it's interesting to note that the rest of LJ phones by Motorola (e.g. V8, Z6) the default web browser is Opera 8.50. The functionality of both is more than comparable, few users will note the differences. The interface is virtually the same, the pages are loaded slightly faster and the text formatting is slightly more optimized, however this hardly makes any big difference. The change of browser is probably the biggest difference between LJ 6.3 and 6.1 revisions. In these days, paying the royalties becomes more and more of a burden to the phone vendors, so Nokia and Motorola decided to switch to non-proprietary, open-source web browsers.

Performance

Motorola RAZR V8 displays high performance results, keeping with the rest of the latest Motorola products (for instance, the U9 or U6). Evidenly, the new solutions by Motorola have a certain advantage in performance over the majority of competitive products, they are roughly comparable with SonyEricsson phones and are a few times faster than most Samsung handsets. The powerful hardware used in the latest Motorolas (e.g. a 500 Mhz CPU) is combined with a high level of code optimization, resulting in groundbreaking performance increase.

Model	Motorola E8	Samsung F300	SonyEricsson W880i
Jbenchmark 1.0.1 Score	6415	1568	8567
Text	1519	499	2243
2D Shapes	1605	383	2289
3D Shapes	1034	199	1395
Fill Rate	746	88	1024
Animation	1484	399	2110
Jbenchmark 2.0.1 Score	593	86	641
Image Manipulations	548	70	579
Text	992	94	922
Sprites	547	99	612
3D Transform	916	94	928
User Interface	267	76	365
Jbenchmark 3D HQ	350	75	408
Jbenchmark 3D LQ	361	84	420
Triangles ps	34102	9186	35391
KTexels ps	3377	948	3592
Jbenchmark HD Gaming Score	258 (8.6 fps)	50 (1,7 fps)	311 (7.2 fps)
Smooth triangles	81630	18953	104695
Textured triangles	62107	13455	71425
Fill rate, KTexels	1327	307	1340

The heap size counts 2.0 Mb, the maximum Jar size is unlimited. Moto U9 displays a very high performance for an image phone, the slight drawback in quality of U9 is most likely due to the unfinalized pre-sale version of the firmware, theoretically both should have equal performance.

Camera

Motorola E8 is equipped with a 2 Mp camera module, commonly found with many of this generation's phones. The camera is rather cheap and offers only an average photo quality, there's no support for auto-focusing and the flash is missing. Shooting at point blank however produces results slightly better than those displayed by V8 and Z6, more to the side of U9. All in all, E8 hardly makes a decent cameraphone and in essense isn't supposed to be such. The camera interface uses the landscape orientation, all the main status indicators are shown in the viewfinder mode - the number of remaining shots, the storage folder location, the shooting mode. The camera application is launched by pressing the side button. There's no lens guard, it's easily soiled.

The camera application is the second to activate an alternative set of keyboard symbols - the zoom, gallery and photo/video mode switch icons appear.

The shooting can be done in delayed mode with a timer set to 5 or 10 seonds, also the multishot function is available - up to 4, 6 or 8 shots in a series. The digital zoom comes with a maximum ratio of 8x, a number of FX image filters and lighting presets (auto-adjust, nighttime, manual) are present here as well.

The following photo resolutions are available:

The photo quality is average, they look well enough on the phone screen mainly due to the high quality thereof, if you try viewing them on your PC you're sure to get a bit disappointed. If we look at other offers in the image phone market segment we'll see however that the quality of the camera module isn't on the priority list for that class of products, it's generally regarded as a secondary feature and little than that, so the mediocre photo quality consequentially can't be considered a drawback either - it's up to the standards of the market segment to which the product belongs. So, the closest comparable competitor Nokia N76 has similar photo shooting parameters, while Samsung U300 is clearly leading because of the noticeable higher quality of taken pictures.

Imaging

A simple editor is found among the applications, intended to provide a limited imaging functionality which includes the following options:

The editor has a very modest functionality and offers no outstanding options - though this doesn't matter a lot as long as the phone comes with a camera like that.

Only two resolutions are available for shooting video clips: 176x144 and 128x96. The framerate is 15 fps, the maximum length of one record can be optionally limited to the maximum length of an MMS attachment. The video quality is rather poor, the clips don't look good even on the small phone screen.

File Manager

The file manager displays a good functionality, there's also the option to create new folders both in the phone memory and in the memory expansion card storage, you can copy, rename, move and delete all types of files. The following view modes are available:

Sorting by name, size, extension and date is in, applicable both to files and folders. You can select any number of objects at a time to apply a user action further. Print method is configurable for images and photos. The file manager isn't bad at all and it also got an interface rather pleasant to look at.

MP3 player

It wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to state that E8 is arguably the best music phone on the market now. What gives us grounds for making such statements? The three main factors that really matter for a music phone: usability of the player interface, audio quality and ergonomics of playback controls. Let's give each of these points some close attention.

First of all, E8 has a 3.5 mm standard headset jack which is equally suitable for plugging the bundled headset or any 3rd party headset in general. This kind of standartization has been long known to produce a certain benifit for the end user, since they are no longer confined to using the trademark headset only. The jack is optimally positioned so no discomfort occurs when carrying the phone in the pocket with headset plugged, much unlike the phones which have their headset socket placed on either side of the casing. The jack is protected with a fully removable plastic gag which poses no discomfort likewise. The keyboard is also designed to provide maximum comfort: once the player application is launched, the keys change their functions accordingly and the key labels reflect these changes, indicating which player function is activated on pressing a certain key: Rewind, Cycled Track Playback On/Off, Random Track Playback On/Off, switching between the modes. So basically it takes you only one keystroke to activate or deactivate an option. There's no need for context menus, everything is totally simple. The Omega Wheel allows for quick scrolling which is essential for long playslists, obviously doing it better than a regular navigation button would do. In other words, the level of ergonomics provided by the unique system of controls that Motorola E8 comes with is extremely high and nothing of the kind is found in any of the competitive products.

Secondly, the audio quality is amazingly high. It's on par with such music phones as Samsung i450, Nokia 5310, N81. More like the i450 model, not as loud as Nokias, but a bit more refined and the basses are slightly better. The limited sound volume is probably the only drawback of E8, in some environments you'd wish it were louder. Nokia 5310 and N81 appear to have some 15% extra sound volume or about so as compared to the maximum sound volume of E8. The high quality of sound in E8 is due to the presence of quality audio processing modules and the codec pack. Besides the phone is powered with a set of flexible equalizer controls and the trademark Spatial Audio technology which first appeared in the E2 model.

It's no secret that every music phone manufacturer tries to squeeze out a sound quality better than the competitors'. To maximize the performance of the audio chips, Samsung are known to introduce special audio booster chips originally produced by the Bang&Olufsen company. The ICEpower Mobile chip increases the signal volume though doesn't directly affect its quality (that is governed by the digital-analog converter which in the case of Samsung phones is known to do its job quite well). Effectively this leads to the highest audio volume available on the market today, which makes Samsung phones appear more attractive to the mass buyer. When it solely concerns the quality of the sound, Samsungs sound more or less on par with the rest of similar solutions. Motorola and Nokia put more focus on the quality and pay less attention to the volume. The introduction of DSP units is exactly what Nokia does to improve the quality above the casual level (slightly ranging depending on the particular model's positioning and price). Unlike the ICEpower Mobile chip which only affects the volume, a Digital Signal Processor splits the wanted signal from the noises and features additional sound processing algorithms, which stands for an unmatched audio quality.

The Spatial Audio employed Motorola has little to do with sound processors, but no matter how it works (and it appears to be a close alliance between a high-quality audio chip and some sophisticated software techniques aimed at filtering and improving the sound signal), it provides a next-gen audio quality which is to be the standard of 2008 and 2009. We can't really say that Nokia and Samsung handsets utterly fail in comparison with Motorola's achievements, but the very fact that Motorola managed to obtain such a high audio quality without introducing any additional sound booster chips is quite a good explanation for our excitement.

Tastes vary, so no clear leader can be defined in the competition. All of the latest XpressMusic, Beatz and ROKR phones offer comparable quality levels and begin to threat even the casual mp3 players which have been all about music since the day of their invention, just like today's top camera phones are about to compete with some of the smaller hand-held casual cameras. If you listen to one of these with your eyes closed, it's really hard to tell which one is playing. After listening for some time a SonyEricsson can be more or less verifiably distinguished from the rest of contestants for an inferior audio quality, the difference from the leaders in this case can be told with a little effort.

The headset which ships along with E8 in the box are of a rather mediocre quality, it's best to yse in a good 3rd party instead. The AKG K26P is a nice addition to the package.

The player interface is both a nice thing to look at and comfortable to use. It's not the best option around however, since the latest Nokias offer independent themes and skins, and a bit more options, yet it's not bad at all, being somewhere high above the average with a distinct stir towards the top. During the playback, the screen shows the track title and the performer's name, the Album Arts feature is supported, the playbar supports progressive rewinding, all the control and playback option indicators are in their places.

Playlists support sorting by performer, song title, genre, recency and frequency of use and so on. The search function is especially remarkable: in addition to the usual searching by title, you can use the performer name, album title and other categories as search criteria which will surely be appreciated by people sporting an extensive music library.

Any of the songs can be instantly sent via MMS, E-mail or Bluetooth. The Flight Mode is in its place, you might want to check it out if you are badly needing to extend the battery life while listening to the music. The playlist management is extremely simple, a name and a storage location are specified upon creating a playlist, then you just add some of your songs to the list and press play.

The device supports the following multimedia file formats:

MP3	+
WMA	+
Polyphonic	+, 64 voice
XMF	+
AMR (Voice Tag)	+
AAC	+
AAC+	+
e-AAC+	+
i-Melody	-
SMAF	-
Midi (SMF)	+
SP-Midi	+
RA	+

The player can run in the background, part of its window stays in sight even while the application is minimized during stadby, once you press the navigation button up the window maximizes back. You can launch any other application with the player running in the background.

The settings include:

Here surfaces another major difference from the V8 model - the availability of the powerful equalizer which affects the audio in a big way. In addition to all the equalizer features, the Bass Boost option is also available and does exactly what its name suggests - a sevent-point scale indicates how much extra power the basses receive. The previously mentioned Spatial Audio feature can also be turned on in the same menu. Unfortunately, there's no way adjust the existing equalizer presets or create custom ones, a limitation completely beyond our undestanding.

The continous playback cycle lasts as long as 15 hours - we've seen better results, though this one isn't a failure at all, rather being on a quite good level. So, summing things up, it becomes clear that Motorola ROKR E8 is equally suitable for a music fan and a casual user. The bad sides of this gadget are the somewhat low maximum sound volume and the scarce bundling (the bundled headset is of a rather poor quality). As for the rest of features, the device seems to be a winner on almost every front. The future models based off this one will have their onboard storage increased to 4-8 Gb, which in combination with the SDHC card support (up to 32 Gb) will become the standard of 2008-2009 for the mid-end and hi-end market segments. The audio quality will hardly get improved since by now it's already very high, and the market of casual mp3 players will accordingly keep shrinking.

As for the radio, it sports an interface similar to that of the mp3 player, only a few options are available though. The current frequency band is selectable from FM 1, FM 2 and FM 3 where a number of bookmarks can be saved. The sensibility of the radio module is very high, apparently better in comparison with the competitive solutions. The headset sound is loud and has a high quality - clearly the best on the market so far. Both the navigation button and the scroll wheel serve for scrolling.

Impressions, market perspectives

The handset offers a high quality of communication, up to the level of the latest Motorola solutions coming with CrystalTalk support. The volume of the polyphonic speaker is just enough for the majority of environments.

It's not suprising that the opinions differ to such a big scale when it comes to this model. It's hardly comparable to the youth-oriented musical solutions like Nokia 5310 XpressMusic even given all the similarities in the characteristics. The difference concludes in design, materials, positioning and so on. The closest actual competitor would be SonyEricsson W880i and its successor W890i with slightly better characteristics and almost the same positioning: a fashion/music combo. But when it comes to the practical values, the Motorola brainchild is obviously better as it gives more audio quality, comfort with the controls, more storage space, etc. As a fashion phone, E8 also seems to have better looks that the SE counterpart. The firmware used for E8 proves to have an advantage over the SonyEricsson stuff, to crown it all. SonyEricsson handsets have no other advantages than the earlier release dates (W890i is to hit the shelf in the beginning of February while E8 won't be there until April). The price of MOTOROKR E8 is quite adequate - about 300 euros which is roughly equal to a few bucks above 400. The price is fully justified, especially considering the 2 Gb memory card which comes in the box, so you start away with whole 4 Gb of storage - actually more than any other phone on the market can offer.

	MOTOROKR E8	Nokia 5310	SonyEricsson W880i
Dimensions:	115x53x10.6 mm	103.8 x 44.7 x 9.9 mm	103 x 46.5 x 9.4 mm
Supported Networks:	EGSM 850/900/1800/1900	EGSM 900/1800/1900	EGSM 900/1800/1900, WCDMA 850/2100
Screen:	2,0" QVGA 262K colors	2,0" QVGA 16M colors	2,0" QVGA 262K colors
Camera:	2MP (up to 1600x1200)	2MP (up to 1600x1200)	2MP (up to 1600x1200)
Video:	QCIF (176x144), 15 fps	QCIF (176x144), 15 fps	QCIF (176x144), 15 fps
Flash:	-	-	-
Release date:	April 2008	November 2007	March 2007
Guiding price:	€300	€230	€300

E8 is a unique offer combining a number of traits not found anywhere else, and the original keyboard in particular. The smooth semi-transparent panel and the dynamically changing key labels produce an astonishing effect. In addition to the stylish looks and the high quality of materials the model offers a lot of really nice audio features, a combination encountered on the market but rarely. The audio quality of E8 is among the best ones found today, it easily challenges most casual mp3 players and music phones by other manufacturers alike. Of course, E8 has a number of drawbacks like the unimpressive screen size and the easily soiled surface.

MOTOROKR E8 occupies a rather odd place in its native series, no other MOTOROKR device sports as many innovations and improvements, and especially when it comes to the controls. Keyboards like this are becoming a new fashionable trand in mobile phone design, and future models by Motorola are sure to develop and improve it even further, standing for more keyboard modes. The easily perceptible vibro feedback makes the touch buttons just as comfortable as if they were hardware ones. The FastScroll wheel is also sure to make numerous reappearances in other models, which is easily explained by its high comfort and usability - it saves a lot of effort while using the player, in the gallery and the rest of the menus and submenus alike.

E8 has a really big potential, and but a part of it is available to the user as some practical features, but that's still enough to smash away any possible competitors. However, there's still a lot of goodness to explore as the future models will exploit more and more of this hidden potential. Now it's up to Motorola not to fail the advertising and shipment dates once again. The 300 euros asked for it seems to be quite an adequate price, being obviosly better than SonyEricsson's pricing of their W890i and similar models, which are more expensive.

SMAPE's

Motorola MOTOROKR E8 is a truly unique solution, combining a top class music phone with a top class fashion phone in the same body. It sports a stunning design and a lot of revolutionary technologies like the keyboard which changes its functions as the user moves from one application to another.

+ The keyboard changes the functions accordingly as you switch menus and applications
+ The high quality of materials
+ Powerful firmware
+ Extremely high audio quality
+ 3,5 mm headset jack
+ Comfortable player controls
+ Large amount of initially available storage (4 Gb)
- Small Screen
- It's a bit hard to get used to the keyboard

Author: Spiridonov Anton, editor@smape.com

SMAPE.com

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