WITH a myriad of multi-feature phones on the market today, it’s easy to get distracted with your needs and wants, but frankly, who could blame you?

There are basic phones that only make and receive calls, phones with camera or global positioning services (GPS) functionality, handheld devices with phone functionality, and even those over-optimistic ones which are marketed as multimedia computer that tries to juggle everything into one oversized package. Too often these multi-talented phones have some music and perhaps video playback capabilities but due to certain design compromises such as the lack of a 3.5mm audio jack or proper software, just didn’t make the cut as a real substitute for that MP3 player.

Addressing this particular niche of a phone with proper audio-playback capabilities, Motorola introduced the MotoRokr E8. Design-wise, the candybar-shaped MotoRokr draws upon the familiar lines of the Razr and the MotoFone but added something extra. Despite the stubles on the keypad, the MotoRokr E8 (Rokr is pronounced “rocker”) doesn’t actually have any real keys. Motorola addresses this limitation by a vibration feedback action dubbed the “heptics” (it’s not a dictionary word, so don’t bother looking it up). Each press of the keypad is followed by a squishy-like vibration that seems to remind one of having water trapped in the soles of their shoes – very soothing indeed. Motorola also added a scroll wheel which allows you to scroll through your playlist or contacts with speed and style, but not much accuracy.

Since the MotoRokr E8 doesn’t have a real keypad, it does make the MotoRokr a bit more vulnerable, especially when it comes to nicks and scratches, since the entire keypad area is like one big screen surface. Motorola addresses this niggling issue by bundling in a snug-fitting slip-on pouch. They forgot that by doing so, they would have muffled the already soft speakers and made answering a call a two-hand operation.

As a music phone, the MotoRokr E8 has good audio playback, two gigabytes of onboard storage and a microSD/microSDHC that easily scales up to 8GB or more, depending on the size of your card. Typically, the MotoRokr has a 3.5mm audio jack and Motorola even bundles in a hands-free kit that doubles up as a pair of good quality headphone with gold-plated jack to boot. Problem is, the headphones or hands-free kit, whichever way you want to look at it, only has a simple button to answer calls, no skip forward/backward, audio up/down or even a play/pause functionality which by itself is an annoyance. Imagine having to take out the MotoRokr from your pocket each time you want to adjust the volume or wanted to skip songs or even to momentarily pause the song. The only thing I could think of is to either use the MotoRokr with Motorola’s own Bluetooth stereo headset like the MotoRokr S9 or even a third-party Bluetooth headset like the Jabra BT320 that bundles in both the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) and Audio Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP) fuctionalities.

Also, thanks to its affiliation with Jay Chou, the MotoRokr E8 has the Taiwanese R&B star’s ringtones permanently stuck to your list of Albums, like Curse Of The Golden Flower, Dragon Tiger Panacea, Queen Sea Big Shark, all between albums by Kurt Cobain, Dave Growl, Michael Stipe and Eddie Vedder.

Battery life is about average, typically offering around three hours of music playback, some average talk-time and messaging before throwing in the towel. The MotoRokr E8 is somewhat of an optimist when it comes to battery life, always displaying a 100 per cent when battery is in fact 80 per cent or 50 per cent, when there’s only about 20 per cent remaining – the battery would be “half-full”.

Motorola designed the MotoRokr E8 solely as a music phone, which means you shouldn’t really expect anything more than a music phone. The built-in two-megapixel camera, for example, has worse quality than two-megapixel phone cameras that came out some three years ago. Still, where the MotoRokr lacks in terms of functionality, it makes up with an ingenious input mechanism and a sleek finish – who cares if it’s nothing more than just a music phone, looks is everything these days.