The iPhone's awful ancestor - Worst Gadgets Ever 004 | Pocketnow
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.ย. 2024
- Contrary to popular belief, Apple wasn't a total newcomer to the mobile-phone world before it struck gold with its halo smartphone line in 2007. Over a year before the first iPhone saw the light of day, Apple and Motorola collaborated to produce a device they nicknamed "the iTunes phone." Conceived as an iPod Shuffle mated to a cellphone, the device called the MOTOROKR E1 was a surprise to very few in the tech press, as details about it had been leaked for months leading up to its announcement. It cost $249 on contract and featured a year-old hardware design, two-year-old technical specs, and a bare-bones build of iTunes with its storage capacity artificially capped at 100 songs. Oh, and it was announced on the same day as the groundbreaking iPod Nano.
Needless to say, the "iTunes phone" didn't sell so well.
Eight years and hundreds of millions of iPhone sales later, Apple accounts for a sizable chunk of the global smartphone market it helped to jump-start. Its name has become synonymous with mobile technology, and though competitors have surpassed it in raw market share, the power of the iPhone product family remains indisputably massive. This impressive showing has diluted the memory of Apple's first failed foray into mobile, and we couldn't think of a better time than the eve of a new iPhone launch to take a look back at the spectacular failure that taught Apple the true cost of compromise - and the value of going it alone.
MOTOROKR E1 Review source:
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Motorola CEO statement source:
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Pocketnow has been a key source of mobile technology news and reviews since its establishment in 2000. With offices on three continents, Pocketnow offers round-the-clock coverage of the mobile technology landscape, from smartphones to tablets to wearables. We aim to be your number-one source for mobile tech news, reviews, comparisons, and commentary. If you love mobile as much as we do, be sure to subscribe!
The iPhone's awful ancestor - Worst Gadgets Ever 004 | Pocketnow
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This phone was fucking awesome... The speakers and led light show was amazing
Absolutely fantastic bruhhh
Fakkz
Fully agree. Loved my Rokr
This was the best Phone I ever used. All this mods.
I think it’s really easy to look back and say how crappy this was when you compare it to the technology of today (especially if you weren’t around when this came out). I had one of these and at the time it was pretty awesome. A big thing not mentioned in this video was the ease of plugging it into your Mac and it syncing with iTunes so easily. Not to mention the lighting effects, speakers, and sound quality were pretty top notch. Obviously the first iPhone came out pretty shortly after but I’d say before the iPhone this was probably the best cell phone I had up to that point or that any of my friends had. Also the Rokr was most certainly way more durable than those first Gen iPhones lol….good God those iPhone Gen 1s would crack if you even looked at it the wrong way.
Hey, that "Disco side lighting" was the shit in 2005!
ikr?
+Steven Manning i liked it night when it would go off when i got a phone call it would light up a dark room
Oh my god
It is time
Stuff that happened to me is totally weird for all the younglings
Ha, I remember owning a SLVR! I didn't want the RAZR because I didn't like the flip form factor and found the SLVR to be an attractive phone for the time. I believe I still have it!
Fernando Duque i had the baby blue SLVR too and I loved it! It was so attractive I believe it was even more attractive then the RAZR.
I absolutely love this phone. I even bought the sequel. The speakers were amazing.
Lot of people don't remember how good this phone's speakers were, no wonder they went with this phone for apple unveiling because at least this phone could play music in the stage so that it could be picked up by the mouthpiece. Most of the other phones of that era would be able to produce a sounds aching to rocks hitting a thin metal in that setting.
I absolutely loved my Moto RoKr E1. I never met a person that didn't like this phone.
Dat 'hello Moto' tho...
It seems Apple was just playing Motorola haha
Boom roasted Motorola!
@@jacob._800 how??
@@deprived1814 The arbitrary 100 song limit was set by apple. They saw phones with music as threat to ipod so they wanted to break in that market.. but they didn't want to stay there.. they just wanted to give the taste of ipod, so effectively promote itunes, so that's why there was the song limit.
@@harshnemesis oh my bad well apple just lost some of my respect
@@deprived1814 Yup they were basically, yeah, but nah.. with this phone, so apples claim that they didn't intentionally want the itunes phone to suck was misleading at best
i miss the hello moto song LOL
Atleast it had a headphone jack...
you needed a adapter for most earphones
It is 2.5 millimeter, meaning it requires an adapter, just like today
Robert Dalton lol
I had a friend who had this phone, and I will say, the one thing it had going for it was EXCELLENT stereo speakers on the sides of the phone. I had a friend who thought it would be funny to run around Ikea playing Royksopp (I had to remind him Royksopp was Norwegian and not Swedish), and it was surprisingly loud, clear, and high-quality. Of course everything else about it was annoying, and he generally hated it, but it was an awesome little boombox.
Not only were those incredible drivers, the phone didn't even need a vibrator motor. They used the sound to emulate the vibration.
The intro of the video will always be relevant.
- The Innovator,
- The Underrated/Underground (made good phones, but not really popular with the mass),
- The endless iterations with slight improvements,
- The screw-ups.
Greetings yourself. Thanks for watching! ^MF
I bought the E398 around Dec '04 . It was my first color phone, and I just loved it. It was one of the two phones from Motorola that came with VibeSync technology. That gave the phone superior sound quality on its external speakers. There was nothing like it. I modded the ROM in the later years, before retiring it for a ROKR E2 in 2007. Then I used the ROKR E2 for another 4 Years :D. Motorola has always had great build quality, and underrated innovation. Their phones were meant to last.
For music it was good! nice speakers!!!
Lite :)
Its funny and amazing to see how much phones have changed in such a short ammount of time. The difference between a phone made in the early 00's and a phone in the late 00's seems like decades of development even though its just a few years.
Buttons are a client gold. I miss that hello moto sound too. ,:'(
I had a Moto G4 and all i hear on startup is HeLlO MOtO BRERREEEERREEEEEEESHUERNGGGGG
@@Dimondminer11 it's the best sound! 😁😁
I used an E1 as well and loved it. Granted, I also had an iPod at the time that was 120 GB so I didn't care that I could only keep 100 songs. However, the phone got great service, awesome battery life, and the only thing I could complain about the phone for that time period would be a bigger screen, but back then other than treos and other smarphone PDA's, the RAZR had the biggest screen on a mobile device before the newcomers started arriving and changing the mobile phone market as we know it, forever.
i had one and it was a great phone i remember the very loud speakers,
and i remember that there was a method to have over than 10,000 song, of course the micro-sd card storage limit was 1gb but anyway i had over 300 song in this phone
I loved this phone, I was 15 in 2005 and I thought it was the coolest!
I remember someone trying to sell me this atrocity. I had just bought a nano to workout with and I laughed out loud. Sometimes I really miss that razr...
Man I had the rocker, I got it on sale a while after it release. Belive it or not at the time it was actually pretty cool, we do need to remember how fast technology has progressed since those days. Back then most phones had really nothing extra to offer. The real problem with the rocker was it was actually really poor quality I don't even think the phone made it threw my contract period. Good times man.
i threw that phone at the wall...
What happend to this series?!?!?!!!?!??!?
ikr
yea i miss it
No Original Name I know but I wish someone would have taken over the series
10fps you can find him as Mr Mobile, he set up his own mobile channel. Fuck pocketnow, it is nothing without Michaelm
6:30 LOL ....... The Elllo moto song.
Hey, the V3i also had iTunes key and feature!
I had this phone and I thought it was awesome. I played tons of Sudoku on that thing. It holds a special sentimental place in my heart, even if it does suck.
I did own a MOTO ROKR E6 that had the wireless Bluetooth headset with it. The phone ring just brought out old memories
I owned this phone back in the day when I was in college. I loved it, fit in my pocket perfectly, battery lasted forever, and I could keep my itunes music on it.
I had the slvr. At the time it was pretty awesome! 512 Mb of storage along with iTunes and a few fun games was more than enough back then.
LOL at the ringtone at the end!! :D
This was a very good video!
I just love how much Motorola has come back up to fight with the big boys once again (with the help of Google, of course). The Moto X, G and E were fantastic sellers, and now they are in control of the current Nexus 6. Well done lads.
No, Google bought Motorola, the new Moto phones are designed and made by Google...
BeyondTheGame You're incorrect. Google sold Motorola a long time ago now.
+BeyondTheGame motorola is owned by lenovo now
motorola won't excist anymore :(
Pocketnow's own Joe Levi reviewed that device for us; the videos are readily available here on the 'Tube. ^MF
I still have one, was one of my first phones I didn’t think it was that bad 😂
You forgot to mention the RAZR V3i, essentially a RAZR V3 with better specs and an iTunes software built-in.
I have E398 and E1 in my collection. They are not fast and overloaded with features but they bass-speakers made their job as a portable music device :)
Lol that sounds like a cat toy. Actually I think my cats would run from it.
I loved my E398 and it's cheap disco lights! That thing had some awesome speakers! But it was extremely slow.
Really? What phones were faster back then? Specifics please
Lol the ringtone at the end .. nice review Michael .. !!
Hope you can make throwback videos again like this.
As I remember it, in Europe the Sony Ericsson Walkmans gained much higher popularity than these Motorolas could have ever imagined. At that time, I truly believed in SE. :-)
It was a Motorola Phone with an i Tunes app. Logic like this would suggest that all phones are related to the failed Facebook phone simply because they carried the Facebook app prior to the Facebook phone release.
Well, as a past user of this phone I can tell you this phone was cool. You only talk about the bad things and limitations. Apple did make these limitations on purpose and couldn't have picked a better day to launch it. It was a music phone and it did a good job. Those stereo speakers are even a rarity these days, the sound was loud and clear and the disco lights were something new and fun. I still have mine now and it works
Loads of people had these when I was at school lol
I did. I trapped like a motherfukr
Wow... that press event was awkward as hell. So much vicarious embarrassment...
You mixed up HTC and Apple clips during the intro.
+Yog Sothoth Nice one lol
I had a motorola E398 and it was great! The sound was great and the size was good for me :)
I remember when both of these came out. I personally thought that it was cool for a phone to be able to keep all of these songs, but I preferred to keep my RAZR and buy a Nano.
back in 2007 I bought my first phone, the MotoRokr Z6M from Alltel. That phone was LEGIT for the day. Boasting an amazing 2MP camera that also shot video back when pretty much all camera phones were 1.3. it also had a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, pretty much the only phone to have that for it's time. it supported up to 4GB, maybe 8GB Micro SD card. I had a 2GB. The MP3 player app was awesome, I used it as my main MP3 player, you could even multitask while playing music, like type and read txt and browse the web while playing music. I still have this phone, just don't use it anymore
the rokr e1 was my first phone… i actually had the patience to load the music in from my powerbook and lived with the 100 songs and kept the others on an ipod nano. replaced it with a iphone 3s later on and used that for years until now when everything is ditched for a macbook pro and iphone 4s, as well as imac ipod touch and ipad
I remember my friend and my cousin called it the "Apple Phone" back then.
I had that phone and thinking back on it, it's incredibly depressing. Comparing it to my 6s today, it's crazy how far phone come. Back then, to have a phone that can store music like an MP3 player was insane. Though the rokr e1 music player was horrible. From playing snake while sitting in the airport waiting to pass the time to being able to listen to music from my cellphone was a huge leap. Today, streaming the Internet, watching movies,TH-cam, over 1000 songs playlist, and downloading new and exciting apps on your cell phone is the norm today. Imagine 15 years ago, if I would gone back in time and told people 15 years ago that one day they will be able to do all that on their cell phone, they would probably freaked or think I'm crazy.
I'm from Trinidad & Tobago. I was NEVER a Motorola fan. I hated all their phones. I only bought the ROKR E1 because of iTunes. Was extremely disappointed with my purchase and sold the phone about 4-5 months after purchase.
I love these large history talks in the video. nice vid.
I had a Rokr. I loved that phone. It was the first phone I ever bough with my own money. It lasted so long and the speakers were loud, in school we modified them to be very loud and I liked my Rokr because when that bass banged the phone shook. Dancehall vibes everyday!
4:54 That disco lighting is actually really cool.
I owned the ROKR, then it broke, and got the SLVR on a warranty trade in. I loved those phones. It was my first foray into convergence device of some kind. I then went on the get the HTC 8525 which was my first Smartphone, that's when I discovered PocketNow. Keep up the awesome videos.
Jobs look visibly disgusted having to showcase this phone at that Apple conference if you watched the whole thing lol
Got this as a hand me down from a friend when my razr broke in half. It worked well once I found a hacked version of the iTunes app that allowed 1000 songs and made some modifications to the interface. It worked like a charm for the next couple years until I bought my iPhone 3G.
I laughed, i cried....this video was informative, fun to watch and moving in a way. Keep pushing out more content like this more often.
I still have my Moto SLVR. I found it last week going through some boxes, it was a great phone back in the day. Great vid Michael!
I remember how pathetic the Rokr was when it was announced. The 100 song limit was a major disappointment. Great flashback.
I had the E398 and it was a love and hate relationship. For one, I hated the really ugly typeface used system wide (but back then, no phone makers bothered about typography). But the loud stereo speakers + tonnes of music in my pocket sold me the phone, then there's the ridiculous 2.5mm headphone jack which was really inconvenient. All in all, it was great memories with hellomoto and oh that ring tone!
My first phone was a Motorola flip phone. Was pretty good back then but as iPhone was revealed, I went from "This Rock!" To "Oh Fuck..."
Michael, this kind of videos are so awesome. Just so clean and smooth, interesting and flawless. Just like a short presentation in school getting an A+ (respectively a 6)
Well done Michael...looking forward to future episodes.
your retro episodes are quite enjoyable
Never had a ROKR, but I had a E398 with ROKR firmware. It was pretty awesome at the time. Just the fact that had iTunes on it, was enough to call people's attention around here. Nothing compared to the first iPhone, but still there was a hype.
cell phones were so simple back in 2003-2006
Aaron P actually they were complex and many monstrosities came out, now most devices are pretty much the same.
trying to figure out fn keys on a flip phone is about as fun as the sloppy, sluggish is they have
The only people who hate on an iPhone are people who have never had one...
I had an iPhone for years, and I still prefer android.
Karsten Armstrong i had 3 iphones sold them and switched to android
haha christian you dumbass
Have either of you had the 5? That one changed everything with its speed.
I used to have it 3g 4s and 5 sold them all
My first ever mobile phone. Rokr E1. I loved using it in my school days.
This took me back to the SE K750i I had at the time. One of the best phones I ever had.
I owned the ROKR; the SLVR and the RAZR V3i. They were great. Though, itunes was annoying with its limited storage of 100 songs.
Please continue this series! There are other bad gadgets like the joo joo, the Grid4 and Grid10, etc.
Your intros are always outstanding.
Yes, I used to have the ROKR E1. 😂
I didn't even realise it was a work with Apple phone. 😂
One credit to the E1 though, it's got the best speaker of that time. I can use it to blast music or listen to radio loud enough across my bedroom...
Or hold a secret birthday party for a few colleagues in a hidden board room. 😁
Other than that, it's pretty meh...
But thanks to your review, all those memories are coming back to me. 😁
I recall colleagues being shocked n deplored by the music n laggy software...
While I was flabbergasted when one of them told me the phone's music software was provided by Apple.
No wonder I never got back to them since. 😁
I remember the commercials for both phones, thinking the concept was pretty cool. Never bought one, though. Didn't have a job in high school, and my parents would never have made such a huge purchase for me.
I used to own a slvr L7. I used it for games, music, and movies even though its screen was an atrocious 2in or so and it ran only on 2g internet if you had the patience to set it up manually. Now I'm looking at the only memory I have of it after I lost it years ago. It's the white headset with a mini-USB plug, which didn't work with any of my other subsequent gadgets. I'm trying to remember how awesome the L7's sound was, or not.
I wish we had "worst gadgets ever" more often!
The pictured phone is the iPhone 4S... the iCloud icon on the box and the dual-bands prove that.
Even if the Verizon CDMA 4 has dual-bands, only the 4S had its box stuck with an iCloud sticker.
*me:*wow so that's mt iphone 6's grandfather....how impressive
*iphone wakes up and siri suddenly talks*
*iphone*:WE MEET AGAIN OLD MAN
*me:*DAFUQ
I had one of those ROKR E1 phones back in the day guess it was so bad, i have more fond memories of using my Motorola v190.
I loved the lights on the speakers. It was pretty cool except for the sluggish UI. It would also take a long ass time to load songs on it
I had a E398 (with E1 firmware, yes, you could flash new firmwares even to old feature phones) and really liked it. MP3, camera and j2me games was everything I wanted from a phone back then :)
I was a star with this phone when I was 16. I was a raver, the phone had bass such strong that the phone would vibrate in your hand and when it would play music the phone would light up.
100 songs was no issue for me, I downloaded hour long mix-sets lol
This was my very first phone at 8 years old and I always wondered what the little music thing was but now I know. The lights were the bomb and mostly the disco song. Ugh wish I still had it so I can see what I had in it.
That was such a disaster in Apple's history that I actually had amnesia over the entire episode until I saw this video. Thank goodness I didn't even think about buying it then. I doubt anyone would want to admit to buying that thing if they were to be asked in person.
Excellent video! This takes me back.
I had that phone once, it was not that bad. I can even customize the software to some extent (including ramping up the max volume). It actually is the first phone that brought me into the world of phone modding.
please bring back this series
I remember this monstrosity. Thank goodness the iPhone didn't turn out anything like this. Plus it only held 100 songs. #EpicFAIL
I...loved...my...slvr. not for the iTunes aspect (I never once used it) but at the time the design to me was super slick, and it fit into that 5th pocket in jeans almost perfectly!
even I don't know apple at all at that time, one thing I hate is: I can't just copy-paste my songs and if it's loaded on itunes, can't use it as a ringtone
MrMobile, what are you doing here? 😂
There are so many kids on youtube nowadays that they dont even know what we had to endure before the iphone. I remember having a flip phone no color and only one small screen. LOL kids today dont know how good they have it.
Lol, Steve Jobs was getting annoyed with the phone when he was introducing it
Do more of this. Also for throwback please do the Sony Ericsson S700. My fav all time phone!
Remember? I had the ROKR and the SLVR. Enjoyed both. But zi was just getting into phones in general at the time so no point of reference lol.
Love this show, Great Video as always from Mr Fisher & Pocketnow
I had this phone and... it was far from "awful". It was a great size, with very easy to operate keys, compared to other phones of the time which had tiny ridiculous keys. It worked, and worked well, with loud clear calls and with good reception and a good tough body. No, it was definitely not "awful".
I had a "Red" Razor, but before that I had a tiny Kyocera Slider, that looked like this Motorola phone. But, it was in the shape of an egg!
Admit it, you still love that "Hello Moto" ringtone.