My new cell phone - the MOTO ROKR E1

I have been in a hunt for a new cell phone for quite sometime now. When it was time to renew my contract with T-Mobile, all they offered me was a Motorola V330 phone which is not a great phone by any means. So decided to look out for new unlocked GSM phones without any contract so that I can give the free phone from T-Mobile to somebody back in India.

The following were the features I was looking in the new phone:

1) Bluetooth - this was a must-have for me since I spend most of my time on the phone during the evenings. This becomes particularly useful when driving and also during my evening walks.
2) Camera - though not a must-have feature, I thought this would come in handy when I had to take some pictures in situations where I didn’t have a camera in hand.
3) Speaker - obviously a nice-to-have feature
4) MP3 playback - again not a should-have feature but would be cool to hear music from the cell phone. Since I have an iPod, this was kind of the last on my priority list.
5) Budget of 200$ - most important of them all

After browsing this site for such phones that fulfilled all the criteria, the only phones I liked were these 2 phones - one from Sony Ericsson and the other from Nokia. But then point 5 would be violated if I were to go with any of these 2 phones. Though they looked great, I wasn't ready to spend 300-400$ on a cell phone.

So finally after a lot of deliberation, I decided to settle for this Moto ROKR E1 phone. ROKR here is pronounced as in rocker'. The phone fulfilled all of my pre-requisite conditions. Though it is not great by the way of looks, it still is sleek and the white casing is actually very attractive and unique. And as most of you know, this phone was built with the collaboration of Apple & Motorola and thus it has the Apple iTunes in it. And the best thing about the phone - it was very conveniently priced at 175$.

I have only used the phone for like 2 weeks now but I have already started loving it. The reception is pretty good, in fact better than my previous Siemens phone which in turn was better than my Sony Ericsson phone (all this in the same apartment). iTunes is a very good add-on feature. The other day when we had to sit inside a car without the option of playing the CD player, the phone's mp3 playback feature came in very useful. The phone comes with a 512 MB card (which is expandable too) and can carry up to a good 100 songs, which is pretty nice. The camera too is not bad. The phone is very light weight, measuring less than 4 ounces. Haven't tried the bluetooth functionality yet but I have only read good reviews about the same. So, if you are on the lookout for a new phone with all the features I have listed above, then the Moto ROKR is just the right phone for you.