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Why the Rokr Phone Is An Important Failure
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian has some interesting commentary on the new iPod cellphone." From the article: "The music-player module works like an iPod - though it lacks the clickwheel that makes its big brothers function so slickly. But overall, the impression is distinctly underwhelming. The word on the streets is that far from being the revolutionary device that will bring about media 'convergence', the Rokr is, well, just the sum of its parts. And that, it seems to me, is the most interesting thing about it."
-- lol pwned
Cingular still makes boku money, just like they always have. And Motorola still makes whatever money they always have. So the phone isn't a failure at all. But it's nothing like the spectacular success that iPod was either. What do you expect from two huge companies who are trying to hang on to their revenue streams?
When it's a CDMA carrier (like Sprint - my carrier).
FWIW, Sprint's the only CDMA carrier that doesn't allow outside phones on their network - Verizon can be coaxed into taking an unlocked Sprint or Alltel phone, and Alltel WILL take an unlocked Sprint or Verizon phone.
Now, GSM carriers? Just drop a SIM card in. Get a quad-band GSM phone from the UK, and throw a Cingular or T-Mobile SIM in, and it'll work in the US no problem.
Your knowledge of copyright law is grossly wrong. The copyright statute itself (you don't need to find court cases or federal regulations) sets out exceptions to the public performance monopolies, and a cellphone ringtone would fall squarely within it. One of the exceptions (there are several -- for church worship, etc.) is that a stereo no more powerful than a typical home stereo is acceptable, and we'd all agree that describes a cell phone speaker. A problem you didn't mention is that in documentary filmmaking, ringtones now need to be "cleared" while previously a telephone ringing did not. The reason isn't what you expect. It's not that documentary filmmakers are worried about losing a lawsuit and paying huge damages, it's that the film distributors won't touch a film if their lawyers see any potential liability. A documentary filmmaker (except for a few like Michael Moore) is likely to be flat broke and not be worth suing, but the distributors have deep, deep pockets and they don't want any liability.
The filmmaking problem comes not from the public performance right of a cell phone, but making a derivative work (the movie) and showing that in theaters (the public performance). The issue of whether the standard copyright defenses (fair use, implied license, first sale, etc.) apply simply doesn't come up.
With great power comes great fan noise.
Apple is just milking it like they did with HP. It's going to fail, Apple will make some money, and their brand nonetheless won't get tarnished.
Convergence sounds so logical when you put it into a business plan. It sounds so great when you ask people if it's what they want. "Do you want one device that cooks your meals, washes the dishes AND entertains you while you eat?" Sure, they say. In the real world, though, convergence devices almost never work in the long run.
I used to believe the convergence myth just as much as the next guy, but a marketing guru by the name of Al Ries convinced me otherwise. If you'd like to see his take on why convergence isn't going to happen, go to this page and click on, "The Convergence Bubble."
http://www.ries.com/Articles/index.cfm?Page=adage
Except that:
1. It's not an Apple phone, it's a Motorola phone
2. It's not getting very much press, especially considering it was released an an Apple event (which always get press) The response has been underwhelming. Nobody seems to care much about the ROKR, while everyone loves Nano. I'm not sure what you mean by "so much" press.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Buy a Treo 650, and it will do these two things very, very well. The extremely well-done contact integration and Palm software support is icing on the cake. Best damn thing I've bought all year, hands down.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Beaucoup.
A Boku is a kind of drum shaped like a truncated cone and meant to be played with bare hands.
It looks exactly like the e398 i have had for 6 months. The only difference appears to be an itunes button and an itunes application.
The only groundbreaking idea about this product is that motorola and apple have the audacity to rebadge an old product and sell it.
They're selling the phone through Cingular.
Cingular charges $20/month for unlimited bandwidth on your phone.
I'm using a Motorola v551 w/bluetooth to my iBook right now to post this.
yes... but that is not high-speed. For $5/month you can get unlimited data transfer over Sprint phones. Get vision service and have dial-up-networking dial #777. More Info At Sprintusers.com
-nick
https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/products/wireles s/whatiswap.cfm#cost
The following call charges apply for WAP GSM & CDMA Mobile calls*:
16.5 cents per 30 seconds for calls made in peak times.
8.25 cents per 30 seconds for calls made in off-peak times.+
All WAP calls will incur a 22 cent call connection fee.
This is what we get charged for GPRS, either PAYG or Subscription, it's outlandish, forget downloading a song! that'll cost you around $40 AU: http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/networks/info/gpr s.htm
There is no way in hell I will ever use gprs other than dire emergencies (so far, that's consisted of a scrabble argument and dictionary.com, once) I am never going to use GPRS until Telstra come to their senses.
I haven't looked into that iMode thing yet, which looks like yet ANOTHER subscription service, but knowing telstra, it will be overpriced and generally useless.
Just out of curiosity ... how do you manage to use the Motorola cellphone as a modem to connect to the internet? I thought this feature was broken or unavailable on Motorola phones currently? Or required USB?
I'd be very interested in doing the same thing -- using my Motorola phone + Bluetooth to access the internet when mobile from my laptop.
I have ZERO interest in using the internet from my actual cellphone display. But using it as a bridge between my computer and the internet when I'm out of range of WiFi, that has some appeal.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Cue the smarm with a link to some clever hacker's rotary cell phone.
Okay.
I guess since the W800i is a GSM phone without the 850MHz band, it isn't sold much in the US. But rest assured in GSM countries the ROKR looks like the piece of crap it is, a Motorola E398 with an extra button.
(Though personally I'm holding out for the Samsung D600 instead of the W800i.)
A quick search on google gave me this: How To Use Your GSM Cell Phone as a Bluetooth Modem on Mac OS X and another hint.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
You had that much trouble sending a text message?
If I wanna send a text message from my Nokia 7210, I just press the "left" directional key from the main screen.
I stick with Nokias BECAUSE they have such a reasonable interface. (Of course, reading the manual helps... despite geeks loathing to do so.)
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
I recently bought a Sony W800 phone. Wow, all I can say is great sound, easy enough to get my music on there, menus very similar to iPod and easy enough for a phone to play music, great camera with LED flash, and even the speaker does not sound that bad in worse case scenario no headphones. Also, the phone allows any MP3 to be a ringtone or message tone. Fast menus, not quite as intuitive as Nokia but much better than Motorola V3, etc.
Sony did a great job here. Not sure why there is no "buzz" around the phone. Only drawback is it looks like a toy phone with the silly white / metallic orange only case option. Great screen though. And memory stick can provide storage expansion, it came with 512K which is pretty good to start.
Another drawback, can't seem to transfer files over bluetooth, need to use USB cable for that.........
And yes, they do have "store" interface but have not figured out how to use it yet!
Real men don't need signitures!!!
PC Mag actually did that in their review of the ROKR. Check out the pictures here.
That's because Apple didn't ship it, Motorola did. Apple only made the software, the rest was all Motorola.
That said, I just happened to be near a Cingular store a few days ago, so I checked it out. I wasn't impressed with the phone, but I was pleasantly surprised they shipped the sample phone with Callin' Out by Lyrics Born. Apple gave me this song in their free iTunes Indie Sampler and it is pretty good.
Andrew
upto 512 mb of expandable memory?? any nokia symbian could do better than that...i have my 6670 expanded to 2gb and have installed a quality audio manager s/w..which makes it a lot better than the rokr... why would apple make such a mistake? common steve..even my granny can do better than this...
that sort of customer-abuse is fairly typical with verizon (the 'get it now' variety of shackles and chains), but cingular hasn't been known for it.
until apple and motorola stumbled through the door with this absurd monstrosity, cingular's flagship mp3 phone was the nokia 6230, which will accommodate up to a gigabyte of bog-standard SD flash memory (the slot's right under the battery), play mp3's without the ridiculous DRM lockdown, and exchange data freely over bluetooth with any OS that will listen.
i hope this isn't a sign that cingular is going down the lock-'em-in, bleed-'em-dry verizon road, but i suppose it won't ever be an issue for me. by the time my 6230 stops receiving calls and SMS'es, the "ROKR" will be as distant and quaint a memory as those first-gen parallel-port samsung YEPP players.
(which isn't to say I didn't get a good many hours of listening out of my parallel-port YEPP... :-)
[1] From the Apple website.
[2] Whether it supports higher capacity cards will be discovered when someone makes TransFlash cards bigger than 512MB.
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...then they might have produced something like this :
http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/5944.html
Just for the record: you cannot thransfer songs to the iPod nano via Firewire. Sadly, transfers are USB only.