My Thoughts on Everything: Moto ROKR E8, 100% Touch Interface

From talk to music in one touch, ROKR E8 features cutting-edge, easy-to-use controls that allow a smooth transition from phone to MP3 player to imaging device.

Here's the first video of the Moto ROKR E8 from the Motorola press party at the CES 2008. Check out the phone-to-music player's ModeShift keypad morphing action below.

Motorola leaked the ROKR E8 images way back in September 2007, but the company finally unveiled its new music phone on Monday at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2008) in Las Vegas. Moto ROKR E8 comes with an interesting back lit touch keyboard and a novel navigation wheel in the middle, which might not be the revolution Motorola is touting it as, but sure looks good. The phone is free of physical keys, with a completely smooth face and is equipped with vibrating haptic controls that makes the phone give you vibration feedback, whenever a key is pressed. The FastScroll navigation wheel is called “Omega Wheel” for music and menu navigation.

Using the breakthrough ModeShift technology from Motorola, the quad-band GPRS/EDGE device presents users with only the controls they need, at the time they need them, instantly transforming from music player to phone to imaging device with the touch of a button. Simply move a thumb across the FastScroll navigation wheel to search for music (music mode), contacts (phone mode), calendar (phone mode) and multimedia (imaging mode). A perfect blend of art and science, the face of the ROKR E8 is a sleek, seamless panel that features the first haptic touch pad from Motorola, which provides vibrating, tactile feedback when the user touches virtual buttons.

Motorola ROKR E8 is a GSM/GPRS phone with 2 megapixel camera, and 262K color QVGA display. The handset has 3.5mm headphone jack, 2GB of flash storage, a microSD slot, FM radio (the 3.5mm headphones must be plugged in), and a microUSB plug. The phone is Linux-based, and Motorola is quite proud of its audio fidelity. The phone is comaptible with Windows Media Player 11 and on the PC allows users to easily transfer their favorite music onto the device.