Motorola Rolls Out New ROKR phones

Motorola takes aim at music fans with its ROKR EM25, EM28, and EM30 mobile phones, with slider, clamshell, and candybar designs, respectively.

Motorola is looking to put some mojo back in its handset business with three new ROKR phones aimed at music fans. The EM25, EM28, and EM30 sport slider, clamshell, and candybar designs, respectively, along with features specifically tailored the more music-centric among us.

"The newest additions to our ROKR family make listening to and discovering new music accessible and affordable for everyone," said Motorola Mobile Devices’s VP for mass market products Steve Lalla, in a statement. "These new ROKR phones deliver the music you want whenever, wherever, and however you want to hear it."

The EM25 slider phone sports an integrated FM radio with dedicated music controls; the phone also offers FMShare that lets users send their friends a test message about a favorite station, and SONGID technology to positively identify a song. The phone comes with up to 2 GB of onboard memory and microSD expansion plus support for AAC, AMR NB, MIDI, MP3, WAV audio. The EM25 also sports a1.3 megapixel camera, BlueTooth 2.0, USB 2.0, and a 128 by 160-pixel LCD display.

The clamshell EM28 offers touch-sensitive music control keys that appear only when needed, and the front of the phone displays artist and track information without forcing the user to open up the phone. The EM28 also offers a 3D sound effect (whee) and 11 EQ presets for different music genres and up to 9 db of bass boost. The phone comes with a 1.3 megapixel camera (with 4× digital zoom), Bluetooth 2.0, up to 2 GB of storage (and microSD expansion), a 1.8-inch 128 by 160-pixel internal LCD (the external display is 96 by 80 pixels), and offers a WAP 2.0 browser.

The EM30 candybar phone uses EDGE connectivity and offers Motorola’s ModeShift technology to transform between phone and music player modes, with bright colors indicating the current mode. The EM30 features FM radio with Radio Data System technology to pull in artist and track info; the phone is also Windows Media Player 11-compatible and can be used with PlaysForSure-compatible music stores around the world. Also on board: a 2 megapixel camera (8× digital zoom), Bluetooth 2.0, and Real Audio support. The EM30 also has the distrinction of being the 22nd LiMo handset to hit the market: it’s running Linux.

Motorola expects to roll out the EM30 in Taiwan in the third quarter of 2008, while the EM25 and EM28 should debut worldwide "this quarter," which we take to mean the end of September. The company hasn’t yet released any pricing information.