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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."
Not to mention that having an MP3 player and a cell phone sharing the same battery is a stupid idea.
This is one of those 'high concept' ideas that may have looked good on paper but will not connect with consumers.
But that's not the way it works: instead, you have to connect the phone to your computer (using a slow USB connection) and get songs from your iTunes music library - just as you do with a conventional iPod.
Strange, I seem to get about 3KB/sec most of the time off Cingular's network here in Maryland. I really don't see the benefit in downloading 4MB files off Cingular's network, especially if you don't have the unlimited data plan. What's USB 1.0 rated at? Over 1 MB/sec? That seems to be about 300x as fast as downloading off the phone network.
Granted, it's not as portable for downloading files, but is it really worth waiting half an hour for downloading a song where there isn't EDGE or EVDO? (I haven't yet found a place where I get "EDGE" speeds in the Baltimore area).
Of course the iTunes mobile phone is limited. Steve Jobs knows what he's doing, and wants to dip his foot into the water of mobile phone music players without cannibalizing the iPod sales. He was less than enthusiastic about the phone - calling it "pretty cool", rather than his usual over-the-top evangelizing, and he looked a bit uncomfortable when using it. He made it pretty clear that this is a Motorola phone with some Apple software, and not an Apple product. The artificial 100-song limit adds to the feeling that this is a plan to get a limited presence in the mobile market, without Apple committing themselves wholeheartedly.
The iPod nano was the real star of the show. If I was from Motorola, I'd be a little annoyed that Apple upstaged the ROKR with the nano. The message seemed to be: "If you want to have music on your phone, here's a decent option, but why would you, when there is a tiny device like the iPod nano that will fit in your pocket with a normal phone, and is better in every way".
Sure this is an important phone cause of iTunes, but I already have a phone that does everything this does and more in a smaller form factor and have had it for a year. (The Audiovox SMT5600) Sure you might groan that it runs windows mobile, but it actually runs really really well. I stuck a 512M miniSD card and walk around with 200 songs on it in full mp3 stereo. So the capabilities of the phone are really just old news cept for iTunes.
Quite the contrare. Many faliures, although failures, pave the way for other things. The Apple Lisa was a failure due to price, but look at computers today.... all based on those concepts such as GUI's, icons, windows, etc. It is really hard to say if a product is a *failure* because it might lead to bigger and better things. In the middle ages, there was a process that used material and lighting to etch a pattern onto the material. such a process was said to create the Shroud of Turin by skeptics. Although it was not popular because it was a lengthy process, its general idea led to photography. this phone may lead to the next big craze.
The article may be right about the 100-song limitation being Apple's fault, but all the other design flaws of the Rokr are the fault of Motorola and/or cell carriers, not Apple.
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Isn't it a little premature to call Rokr a failure? I mean, sure, it wasn't the Apple-designed mana-from-heaven iPod phone many wanted, but other than that, what's so bad about it?
I ordered one yesterday at the Gold Coast Cingular store in Chicago (about two blocks from the Apple North Michigan Ave store) - one guy was already in there playing with the one demo model, and right after I walked in, two people walked "wanting to see the Rokr". From the looks of it, Cingular is special ordering all these, or at the least, can't keep them in stock in stores just yet.
Remember iPod mini's debut? Who would pay just $50 less for a mini iPod that had (at the time) 16GB less space? Or what about the iPod itself? $299 was just too much for a 5GB MP3 player. Yet both flew off the shelves, each at their own pace, but both were doubted at their beginning.
I wanted a new phone, with Bluetooth to use my Prius' hands-free system and the ability to use at least some of my iTMS songs on it. So I can't load my entire 6.5 GB music library, but my main playlist only has 80-90 songs, big deal. It doesn't look like an iPod, but quite frankly, I'm glad. Phones are primarily for making calls, and I like to use numbers to call people, not swing a clickwheel around to rotary dial - why should there have to be a clickwheel on the phone when I know of no one today that would prefer a rotary dial over touch-tone phone.
Let's wait at least until mid-week to decide if this was a failure - iTunes Japan surprised everyone in just a week, and most of the buzz has been about the nano all this week (which absolutely rocks, but is too expensive to just replace my iPod as my car's jukebox). If sales numbers are where I think they might be, this "failure" might surprise everyone just like the last two mispriced, misplaced Apple pieces.
Seriously, the iPod is a very, very nice music player. All current mp3 playing phones are nowhere near as good as a scroll-wheeled iPod.
I'm sure it is. I never stated otherwise.
Convergence is a nice thing, and I do like it, but the camera on cell phones aren't good enough to replace an actual digital camera, and the mp3 playing phones aren't good enough to replace an actual mp3 player.
Digital music being what it is, however, what makes it a very, very nice music player is nothing that inherently is impossible to duplicate in a device like a phone (unlike the camera).
Consider, if you will, an iPod - an actual, real iPod, down to the translucent plastic and scroll wheel. There is no technical or UI reason not to be able to stuff a radio and a phone/email device in there (I use mine more for email than talk). Conversely, there is nothing magical about playing mp3 (as opposed to, say listening to radio) that makes it impossible to make a good UI for it in a phone.
Most importantly, it doesn't even have to be fully as good as the iPod; "good enough" really is good enough. My current phone only lacks a convenient way for me to download mp3:s (now I have to email them to myself which gets kind of old), and it doesn't play all my Ogg:ed audiobooks (which, by the way, the iPod can't either). The UI already is good enough for me.
Or to put in another way; a decent but not great player in my phone handily beats a wonderful player that stays at home since I carry too much crap already.
Now, if you really aren't all that into photos or music, an mp3 picture phone might be just what you are looking for.
Cameras are different than sound; optical quality really is size-limited. There are good physical reasons a camera phone - or a small standalone camera, for that matter - can't approach the optical quality or noise level of a larger one. An mp3 player isn't limited in the same way.
I really care about photography, so I carry a DSLR (a major reason I don't need still more stuff with me). I'm a casual listener; I use music and radio to entertain myself on the way to and from work. To the limit of my hearing (and my ability to care), that mp3 will sound exactly as good being played from my phone as it does from an iPod.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
You realize you're typing on a computer right?
Convergence is great provided:
The obvious problem in this case is not that we don't want a cellphone that can play music but that it is intentionally crippled.
Personally, I'd love to have a device that could be a PDA, MP3 player, cellphone, and wifi/voip device all in one. The only problem is that cellphone companies always end up making things like that suck because thye try and squeeze money out of you for stupid shit. Like charging you $10 to transfer YOUR phone numbers to your new phone.
They're not going to be able to do that if your phone syncs like a Palm. They're not going to get ringtone money if you can use your own music. They're not going to get as many cellphone minutes if you can use wifi when its availible.
They are holding us back, dammit.
Life is too short to proofread.