Motorola's original ROKR was born in a blizzard of hype.

Dubbed the 'iTunes phone', it was the first phone to feature Apple's iTunes service, and helped spawn the new blizzard of iPhone hype we're currently being swamped with.

Unfortunately for Motorola, the ROKR soon died an ugly death of shame, embarrassment and chronic disillusionment, as it was hobbled by Apple, and could only store 100 tunes.

Motorola tried again with the stillborn ROKR E2 and the E3, but that was pants as well, despite ditching the iTunes service.

Now, Motorola are trying again, with the Motorola ROKR E6, a brand new update on a much ridiculed phone. So have they got it right this time?

Motorola ROKR E6

Motorola have certainly got it right when it comes to looks. The ROKR E6 looks great, sharing certain similarities with the RAZR, and coming with a huge 2.4" touch screen display with 262,000 colours. Its tunes quotient has been upped too, thanks to its support for microSD cards, which means it can store up to 2 GB of tunage.

Multimedia support is good, as you'd hope for a multimedia phone. As well as MP3, the ROKR also supports AAC, WMA, RealMedia, WMR, WAV, MPEG4 and H.263 media formats.

Better still, the ROKR E6 even comes equipped with smartphone features. based on Linux, the ROKR features a web browser, email client, Motorola Office and loads of other PIM functions.

So, the new Motorola E6 looks great, is stuffed full of features, has everything you need from a multimedia phone, and is slim to boot (just 14mm thin). Sounds great - but this is Motorola, there must be a catch, surely?

Well, yes - currently the ROKR E6 is only destined for China!!

Are they mad?! Surely there's a market for this phone in the West? OK there are other music phones it must compete with (any one of Sony Ericsson's Walkman phones, Nokia's N-Series music phones, such as the Nokia N91, which comes with a 4GB hard disk, Samsung's new X830 MP3-like music phone, or any of dozens of other music phones from the likes of Samsung, LG and Pantech).

And yes, this phone really should have been released a year ago if it was to stand any chance against this lot. But still, since when was Motorola afraid of competition?

Rumour has it that the Motorola ROKR E6 may make it outside of China and be shipped elsewhere, so if you really want to get your hands on this new phone, start emailing Motorola now.

[Source: MobileGazette]