What of the iTunes phone?
April 4th, 2005Notably absent from yesterday’s mac friendly phone options were the new (and future) offerings from Motorola. Most importantly, what folks are calling the "iTunes phone". Motorola and Apple haven’t provided many details of the future phone, and I haven’t been able to find a photo of the phone on the web (yet). But it’s likely that the phone will largely mirror the newly announced E680i and E725 music phones.
Will either of these phones be any good? No way to know yet, but it comes down to a few issues. Will they show up as a source in iTunes the way my iPod does? Will I be able to make playlists? Will it be easy to switch songs and adjust volume? We’ll find out later in 2005 when these phones ship.
Motorola E680i
The E680i is a Linux-based music phone, featuring stereo audio over Bluetooth, the capability to hold a 2GB SD/MMC memory card, an AM/FM tuner, and a .3 megapixel camera. Supported formats include mp3, wma, RealAudio, AAC, MIDI and WAV. From photos, it looks like rather vanilla industrial design, but if the interface is intuitive – that’s all that matters.
Motorola E725
The E725
has similar specs as the E680i, but supports 1 GB of memory via a miniSD card. It appears to have a bit sleeker design, with a sliding handset that conceals the phone keypad when not in use. In the useless gadgetry department, the phone also has a series of lights that pulse with the music being played.