Motorola Releases New Rokr Phone

By Scott Smith in News on Jan 4, 2006 3:50PM

After months of sneak peeks and speculation, Schaumburg-based Motorola revealed the Rokr E2 phone on Tuesday with promises of faster download times, greater song capacity and far less suckage than its earlier model.

The first Rokr model phone garnered plenty of attention as the new kid in school thanks to its iTunes interface. But almost immediately after its arrival, it was shunned for being ugly and totally uncool; even the nerds didn’t want it to sit with them during lunch in the cafeteria. The new E2 phone, which will ship in six months, is based on Motorola’s PEBL design and promises to be bigger, hotter, sexier, and will not stop until it knows you’re sassified. (You can always tell when you get sassified—you start calling out the Rokr E2’s name).

Wired Magazine summarized the problems of the first Rokr phone here. The new Rokr improves on the first model with an expanded capacity of 500 songs (additional songs can be stored with optional memory cards), the ability to handle non-iTunes music files, USB 2.0 download speeds, a better interface and a Bluetooth-enabled stereo headset. Motorola hasn’t said whether the E2 will have iTunes but other new Moto phones will.

We haven’t seen any reports on the pricing structures for music ordered through wireless carriers but Motorola announced plans to roll out their iRadio service, which will allow for 435 channels of music to be streamed through the phone.