Although Motorola is not so popular in the market of music cell phone, this vendor is still proud with some of its ROKR series. To be honest, I’m really impressed with some of Motorola cell phones, especially with their top notch sound quality. This time, one of Motorola army called

Moto Rokr EM30 is rolled out to the market under the ROKR series that comes with great music capability. And as a music cell phone, Moto Rokr EM30 has every element of a great music device.

Design

At the first sight, Moto Rokr EM30 looks really compact and portable. It looks slim and convenient to hold. The most prominent element on the whole side of this phone is definitely the red trimming that wraps up the entire side of device. Even when you look at this phone from the front angle, the red trimming can still be seen clearly. The other element that also gets the red trimming is the Motorola circle logo above the screen.

Moto Rokr EM30

Since this phone is categorized as a music cell phone, then Moto Rokr EM30 has a dedicated navigation that is specifically assigned to control the music player. Yeah, I’m talking about the D-Pad of this phone. As you can see, the D-Pad of this phone is designed by the vendor in metallic material that looks prominent on the front side body.

The red trimming

I also think that a good music gadget, either it is a cell phone or MP3 player, should have this kind of D-Pad. For an instance is iPod. If you have the old generation of iPod, you can see that its circle D-Pad looks really prominent on the front side.

Moto Rokr EM30

Dedicated Quick Launch for Music Player

Anyway, around the D-Pad, there is also a dedicated music player button that is assigned as a quick launch to music player. Interestingly, the surprise element of this phone is hidden beneath the numeric keypad.

If you press that dedicated music player button, the blue back light that normally lights up the numeric keypad will be automatically turned off. And then, the new navigation for music player (e.g,. Play/Pause, Forward, Backward, Repeat, etc) will appear in the middle area of the numeric keypad which now has turned from blue into red light. Cool!

I’m really amazed by how genius this vendor in creating such a brilliant design like this. Not to mention, the D-Pad that is surrounded by blue light in default will also turn into the red light once you press that dedicated music player button.

Interface and Functionality

The other great thing about this phone is absolutely the user interface of this phone. Although I don’t really like the default “ROKR” wallpaper, this phone surprisingly has an amazing user interface. Moto Rokr EM30 has been planted with Linux/Java-based MOTOMAGX operating system. So it’s kind of new or rare around the cell phone market these days. Anyway, with the use of that operating system, the one that gets the impact is definitely the User interface.

If you open the main menu, you will be presented with a march of displayed menus or applications on the bottom area of the screen. The selected menu or application is shown on top of the screen as big icon. And every time you slide the menu to the left or right, it will show you the vertical view of that selected menu in 3D display. So this user interface looks great and also works great in the whole performance.

Screen

With the supports of TFT, 256K color display and 320x240 pixel screen resolution, everything that is presented on the 2.0 screen looks bright and sharp. The overall look of the screen is also great, thanks to its awesome user interface.

Camera

The 2MP camera has been embedded on the back side of this phone. Although the specs of its camera are not high definition quality, the results of the photos or videos taken by this phone are still considered good. Not to mention, you can also do a zoom in or zoom out mode while taking a photo.

Features

Released in September 2008, this phone comes with some other features of standard mobile devices, such as: Bluetooth, USB, 3.5mm headphone jack, Stereo FM radio, Java MIDP 2.0 and many more. And if you have a lot of song collection that you want to store in this phone, you don’t need to worry about anything because this phone has supported microSD external memory up to 8GB on upgrade.

Conclusion

Bottom line, Moto Rokr EM30 is specifically released as a music cell phone. Although the cell phone market has been populated with vast majority of touch screen smart phones, it doesn’t mean that this phone will not get special treatment from the market.

Offering users with brilliant music player navigation, compact design, good music capability, great looking user interface and the addition of 2MP camera, it can be hard to not recommend this phone as a good quality music cell phone.

And if the price of Moto Rokr EM30 hits the low-end market, you will be a happy customer when getting this phone. Moto Rokr EM30 is definitely a great addition for mid-end cell phone market.

Phone Specifications

• TFT, 256K colors
• 320 x 240 pixels
• 2.0 inches
• (~200 ppi pixel density)
• Linux / Java-based MOTOMAGX
• Java MIDP 2.0
• 2 MP Camera (1600x1200 pixels)
• microSD support up to 8GB
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• 3.5mm jack
• USB
• Bluetooth