Motorola Shows Innovative Video, Music Phones

LAS VEGAS--Motorola announced only two new phones at its Consumer Electronics Show press event, but both featured the type of dazzling technological innovation we brave CES to see.

The Moto Z10 couples an advanced camcorder with the most sophisticated video-editing software I've ever seen on a handset. And the smooth, glassy Rokr E8 phone/MP3 player uses digital touch technology to change its entire appearance to fit the task at hand.

The Z10, a quad-band GSM phone with high speed (HSDPA) data support, slides open at a dog-leg angle to reveal its keypad. But closed and in camera mode, it can capture QVGA (320 by 240) video at 30 frames per second, and up to three 3.2-megapixel stills per second. The camera can fire up in 1.5 seconds, which would make it significantly faster off the mark than most phone cameras.

Equally impressively, its video-editing application, created by beteran graphics software company ArcSoft, looks like a real video editor. You can place clips in a timeline, link them with one of the 15 included transitions, and add an audio track. You can then upload them to video-sharing sites such as YouTube or ShoZu (support for the latter is bundled with the phone).

Here are photos of the Z10 in its standard and phone-mode configurations:

And here is the back of the Z10:

In contrast to the brushed metal -Z10, the Rokr 8 is a smooth dark glassy slab when turned off. But unlock it, and it comes alive with a virtual phone keypad and other controls sketched in light under the glass surface.

Here are photos of the Rokr E8 closed and viewed from the side (note that nothing sticks out).

Tap the music icon and the lights change, chameleon like--the keypad disappears and you see music player controls instead. Here are images of the Rokr E8 in MP3 player (left) and phone mode:

A GSM/EDGE phone with a built-in two-megapixel camera, the Rokr E8 has yet another face as an imaging device. It uses haptics force-feedback technology so that when you press a virtual button, it feels like you're pressing a mechanical one under the glass. The touch-sensitive scrolling wheel can speed up as you browse through song collections or contacts.

You can enjoy your music via the built in stereo speaker, Bluetooth headsets or external speakers (such as Motorola's new compact EQ5 and EQ7 models, or wired headphones that connect to a 3.5mm jack.

The Rokr E8 uses Windows Mobile 11 Media Player to transfer music from PCs to its 2GB internal memory (or up to 4GB more via optional external flash storage cards). It has Song ID music recognition software to help you identify tunes you hear on the built-in radio or elsewhere around you.

Both the Moto Z10 and the Rokr E8 are due by the end of the first quarter of 2008, with pricing to be determined by carrier (presumably AT&T Wireless in the US for the Z10 at least, as T-Mobile--the only other national GPRS carrier--doesn't support the handset's 3G data speeds).

See PC World's ongoing coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show at our CES InfoCenter.

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