Get Ready to Rock With Motorola’s ROKR

If you’ve been keeping abreast in the world of technology, you know that the word “convergence” has been hot lately. I’m not a big fan of these types of gadgets unless they’re really good. I believe a camera should be a camera, a phone should be a phone, or an mp3 player should be an mp3 player. If you mix everything together, the end result may not be a quality product.

Well, Apple, Cingular and Motorola recently partnered together to create the first mobile phone with iTunes, and the outcome? It’s no substitute for an iPod, but the Motorola ROKR definitely has the word “convergence” written all across it. I thought it could be interesting. . .talk about a do-it-all gadget. You can listen to music while browsing the Internet, sending and receiving messages and while taking pictures. You don’t need to worry about calls coming in because you can easily pause the music when you need to take a call.

As a phone, it’s nothing exceptional, but, it what really makes it unique is the ability to actually play music. The phone is equipped with a single button on the face of the phone that takes you straight to an iTunes screen that looks similar to a color iPod. There you’ll find playlists, artists, albums, shuffle songs and now playing entries. You can easily navigate using the small four-position joystick-like button located in the middle of the phone. With this you can also adjust the volume and it acts as an iPod’s previous and next buttons.

You can load up to 100 songs on the phone using a USB cable and listen to your music with either the ROKR’s built-in “surround sound” speakers (with rhythm lights) or headphones. As with the iPod nano, the ROKR’s color screen displays the album art of the song you’re currently playing. It also gives you up to 6.5 hours of talk time, a camera with a zoom and flash, video recording and playback. As with many of the newer phones out there, all the standard features are on it: Bluetooth capable, address book, calendar, instant messaging, e-mail, customizable ring tones, etc. In addition, it uses at 512MB flash memory card to store your music.

A couple of drawbacks with the ROKR are that it takes a long time to transfer music on it, and that it doesn’t have that extreme “wow” factor I’ve come to expect from Apple. But, if you’re not picky, and want to save money on buying separate devices, this could be for you.

The Motorola ROKR comes pre-installed with iTunes and includes stereo headphones and a USB cable. It is exclusively available for $249.99 at your nearest Cingular store, or www.cingular.com.