Unboxed: Motorola ROKR E8

My Monday morning treat this week was from Motorola – the new ROKR E8. If I was to review the box, it would get three stars – its sliding action, which requires you to pull both ends to reveal the phone, puts style ahead of usability, as it makes it difficult to get at the accessories (the usual mix of charger, software and cheap headphones).

My gadget intuition suggests the same will be true of the phone. Its clever feature is Modeshift, which changes the main keypad depending on which mode you’re in. So if you press the Music shortcut, the keypad gives you the buttons below.

The trouble is that the much maligned Moto menu system and semi scroll wheel still feel a bit fiddly and unintuitive. On the plus side, the screen is very high-res and you do get 2GB memory on board alongside A2DP Bluetooth, so it could yet gatecrash the music phones Top 10. We’ll have a full review and hands-on video soon.

Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home