Ok, the ROKR E1 was a complete fucking turd. 100 songs? Give me a break. Motorola apparently realized this and is planning to release a ROKR E2 that fixes most of the shortcomings of the E1. It also looks a ton nicer if in fact the final product ends up looking anything like the picture. From the AppleInsider article, it appears as though it’s going to connect to the PC via USB 2.0, still has iTunes but will support up to 1000 songs (that’s like 4GB so I wonder how that’s going to work!), 1MP camera, bluetooth stereo headset compatible (A2DP profile, I’m assuming) and a normal 3.5mm headphone jack instead of the stupid cellphone 2.5mm jack. I especially like the idea of using bluetooth stereo headphones instead of having wires. Just have the phone in your pocket playing tunes and headphones on without having to worry about wires. Too bad more phones don’t support it. I don’t konw of any others that do at the moment but there are a few that really should. Verizon’s Samsung A950 and Sprint’s Samsung A940 (no relation to one another) both are mp3 phones with bluetooth and have removable memory (microSD) slots but neither support streaming audio to a set of bluetooth headphones. At least the Sprint A940 comes with a set of stereo headphones, unlike all of Verizon’s mp3 phones (A950, A970 and LG VX8100). Needless to say, I’m a big fan of convergence devices since as of right now I carry both a phone and an mp3 player. My mp3 player is 6GB and I’ll probably continue to carry it around until I can get something comparable in a cellphone. Even 1GB of storage probably won’t cut it. I’m eagerly awaiting something similar to the Nokia N91 to come to America. A phone with a 4GB hard drive in it! That’s what I’m talking about! Plus it supports 802.11b/g wifi and 3G UMTS. They even thought enough to include a normal 3.5mm headphone jack, too. Hell, that sucker even has a 2MP camera! Bring that bad boy over here and I’ll be the first in line for one, that’s for sure. Granted, we’ll have to wait for UMTS service from either Cingular or T-Mobile. Sadly, it’s only 900/1800/1900 so it won’t work on all of Cingular’s networks (they use 850Mhz in many areas). Perhaps Cingular will convince Nokia to make a quad band version of the phone so they can sell it here.
Here’s to hoping! Or at least hoping that somebody comes up with a similar device if we can’t get the N91 here specifically.