Motorola ROKR E6
Filed Under (Motorola, PDAs, Smartphones) by admin on 07-12-2008 >> 155 views
Tagged Under : Motorola, Motorola ROKR E6, PDAs, Smartphones
Motorola has been selling Linux-based devices for quite some time since the company’s first announcement to adopt the platform in February 2003. Unlike handhelds which run on Symbian or Windows Mobile, the open-source approach for Linux takes advantage of community-based development for the system.
Unveiled at the ITU Telecom World in December 2006, the ROKR E6 is not like the musically talented ROKR E1 and E2 that came before it. It is more a smart phone with multimedia capabilities, targeted at young professionals.
Design
The all-black chassis of the Motorola ROKR E6 reminds us of the classic RAZR lineup with laser-etched controls, except that it’s in an oversized candy-bar form factor. The E6 uses touchscreen input, so users who prefer a hardware keypad to thumb away are better off with the slider ROKR Z6.
Unlike most touchscreen phones with their LCDs slightly below the surface of the unit, creating a sort of rim around it, the ROKR E6 is completely flat. Instead, the panel is under a transparent plastic layer that makes you feel like you’re tapping on a layer of air. You never really “touch” the screen’s surface in actual use.
At 123g, the E6 is not the lightest phone around, nor is it the thinnest (14.5mm), but the build quality is excellent.
Features
Like we mentioned earlier, the ROKR E6 is not like the iTunes-savvy siblings that came before it. In fact, placing the E6 in the ROKR category is a misnomer since the smart phone is nothing like the E1 and E2, both in terms of design and features.
There are some things which we really like on this ROKR, such as a 3.5mm audio jack, a Secure Digital card slot for up to 2GB of flash media, a Hold button to prevent accidental presses and a mini-USB port.
As a multimedia player, the installed RealPlayer is capable of playing most popular formats including AAC, AAC+, DRM, MIDI, MP3, RA, WAV and WMA. The E6 also supports Bluetooth stereo so you can use your wireless stereo headset. One thing we didn’t take too well to was the poorly located music playback controls on the left edge of the phone. Because of the flushed surface, it is hard to feel for the buttons, much less know what each represents.
Features (cont.)
Over at the back of the E6 is a 2-megapixel camera. Again, this is a mixed bag. We’re right-handed users, so by having the shutter button on the left edge when the phone is held horizontally means we have to consciously remind ourselves that the shutter is on the left and not on the right like most digital cameras. Just beside the camera lens is a handy slider to switch between landscape and macro shooting modes. The phone’s internal memory is only a measly 8MB. Fortunately, like we mentioned earlier, the E6 has an SD card slot that supports up to 2GB of flash media.
That’s not the only trick up this ROKR’s camera sleeve. It’s also a Webcam when connected to a PC via USB (you’ll need to install the drivers) and a business card reader. During tests, the camera had to be switched to macro mode and we found the card reader function worked best on white-based namecards with good lighting. Oddly enough, it took preference to Chinese characters over English letters on the cards we tested and didn’t recognize Japanese lettering.
Unfortunately, the ROKR E6 doesn’t match up with other smart phones in the market. Unlike Office Mobile or Quick Office on Windows Mobile and the Symbian Series 60 operating systems, the E6 doesn’t come with any built-in document editing applications. What it has instead is the Piscel Viewer which allows the user to read only Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Adobe PDF files.
Performance
We tested the triband (900/1800/1900MHz) Motorola ROKR E6 in Singapore with a MobileOne SIM card. Overall, call quality was decent and the onboard speakers worked as expected and were sufficiently loud. The only issue we had was with the lack of a hardware keypad, which was quite inconvenient at times.
Image quality from the 2-megapixel camera was decent, though it’s nothing fantastic. The macro and landscape switch came in handy but the lack of autofocus and built-in flash light limited our shooting in certain environments.
Motorola rates the ROKR E6 with a talktime of up to 7 hours and a maximum standby time of 9.7 days. In actual use, we managed to use the phone for approximately three days before the 1,000mAh battery ran out of juice.
Review Video:
