Digital Lifestyles Reference Guide

Aug 27, 2004

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You need iTunes 5 for Windows or Mac OS X to sync your music to the ROKR phone. At that point, the phone is very similar to an iPod with one minor exception; you're limited to 100 tracks on the phone. This 100 song limit is somewhat dependent on the encoding choices you made when ripping songs from your CD collection, but should hold true for any songs purchased in the iTunes Music Store. Once the songs are transferred to the phone, an iTunes key, complete with the familiar green pair of eighth notes, switches directly to your music library.

Apple is very careful to compare the experience of playing songs on the ROKR to playing songs in iTunes. It's really an experience very similar to playing songs on an iPod. The screens for browsing music look very similar to the screens for browsing your music library on every iPod except the Shuffle (which doesn't have a screen). File transfer is a painful 30 seconds per song, which seems to be one of many features designed to protect the iPod empire.

One of the smartest features of the phone is a built in pause function when a call comes in, with automatic resume on hang up. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to fumble through various buttons to receive a call; this feature manages the process gracefully.

A multitasking interface supports music playback while also taking pictures with the camera, sending or reading SMS messages or browsing the Internet. If you aren't doing anything else with the phone, the screen displays album art for the current track.

A couple of wacky features will appeal to fans of screen visualizations. The phone vibrates in time to music, akin to force-feedback in gaming controllers. An added bonus is a set of lights that pulse on the edge of the phone during playback.

Normally battery life would be a boring but useful phone feature. The ROKR boasts 6.5 hours of talk time with up to 260 hours of standby time. Music playback time is supposedly 15 hours using a wired headset or 6 hours using the surround sound feature. So far, no one can confirm for me how battery life is impacted by a combination of talk time and music playback. My Audiovox SMT 5600 handles music and video playback quite well, with no noticeable loss of battery life between normal charge cycles, but I can't find any documentation or sales help to answer this question with confidence.

Conspicuously absent is the ability to browse the iTunes Music Store, purchase music through the phone or download tracks over the air. This could be caused by one of many factors. Access to iTunes Music Store puts the customer outside the carrier's control, taking potential revenue away from the carrier (although an option to buy tracks and have them billed to the phone seems like it would be successful if implemented). Access to iTunes Music Store via phone would mean fewer reasons to buy an iPod, which hurts Apple's bottom line. It's hard to say whether the current authentication method for iTunes Music Store is compatible with cell phone browsers.

Other Features of Interest

Possibly the least-discussed feature of the phone is the camera with flash. The zoom is purely digital, making it a worthless addition capable only reducing image quality. On the plus side, you can use the camera to record stills or MPEG4 video, which makes it a potential tool for video blogging. The best way to export video and photos at this point is using the standard email option, complicating the delivery process slightly.

One of the strangest additions to this phone is a pair of onboard stereo speakers. While it may be interesting to playback music on the equivalent of a souped-up speaker phone, the quality is below laptop sound, which doesn't speak well for the feature.

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