Motorola ROKR E6

The E6 is a solidly built phone with a square profile that gives it a masculine edge. The rear of the unit is entirely metal and the phone is very well built with great quality of materials used. Its Linux-based and has an Intel XScale CPU to power things. Despite this the interface is not always snappy but suffices for the more mundane tasks. The resource intensive applications such as games, camera usage, video recording and playback suffer lag under this hardware. It’s a touchscreen and Motorola provides a superbly built stylus that is long enough to be held as a pencil — something that most vendors neglect. After all no matter how small the phone one’s fingers remain the same size. The menu and call buttons are well laid out and typically flat with hardly any button travel like most Motorola’s. The onscreen keyboard is very tiny and not usable enough to be termed as even passably ergonomic. Typing even a short SMS is a pain in the rear and we had a lot of false key presses. Two quick key hits may also be registered as one therefore there is no reward even after you get used to the flawed interface. The menus are well presented but not as intuitive as we would have liked — things aren’t always in their logical locations. The screen lock button is slider based and feels clicky. The volume buttons are an exception to the ergonomic misses and although built flush into the phone, they are easy to use owing to great feedback. Since the phone uses SD memory the card bay occupies a lot of space and the multimedia buttons are placed below this slot. Although all the buttons on the sides are easy to use, we lament the lack of backlight that would have made them accessible in low-light conditions. To that end, we have to question Motorola’s design sense to make non-backlit buttons that are the same colour, and as flat, as the bezel around them. The earbuds supplied are decent but the size of the bud is huge and not a comfortable fit for most ears. One plus is the provision of a 3.5-mm jack. Music playback is good but the camera is mostly included because not having one would be a glaring omission.

Priced at Rs. 10,078 the ROKR E6 is a handset that has quite a few flaws and might only be attractive to our Tux lovers.