Tech Throwback: Motorola E1 Rokr, The First iPhone

I like to take a look at where I’ve been to evaluate where Im going. Technology is cyclical after all… wait no its not. That said I still like all the feels that come rushing back like a flood of nostalgia every time I get my hand on the tech I grew up with. Im going to go back periodically and take a looking at the stuff that used to blow our hair back and get our minds rolling. Some of these device blew up and changed the world, some where ahead of their time and some just fell flat and became colossal failures. Today we have a flop but it set the table for one of the greatest tech revolutions of mankind’s existence. Before there was a thought of an iphone, there was Apples first foray into the mobile world. There was a partnership with Apple and Motorola for the Motorola E1 Rokr.

The Motorola E1 Rokr

The Rokr E1 is a repackaged Motorola E398 candybar style phone. However this new bombshell would come with Apple-licensed technology to play back iTunes Music Store purchased music. This doesn’t sound very stellar but at the time this was huge. Phones where just getting cameras. The V3 Razr was blowing up the cellular world, cell phones where now not just fashion accessories but status symbols as well.

Launched on September 7, 2005 in San Francisco, California, the E1 is the first phone to be integrated with Apple Inc.’s iTunes music player. It features a music player with an interface similar to that of Apple’s iPod music players.

The next phone being the first iPhone in 2007. This made the Motorola Rokr highly anticipated and tech sites were following the collaborations between Motorola and Apple as far back as December 2004.The Motorola e1 Rokr was a Cingular exclusive. Cingular had dedicated an endcap and standalone display in all of their corporate owned stores.

Powering Up The Rokr

I found a gently abused Motorola E1 Rokr on ebay, a new battery and we are powering it back up. It shows the Motorola logo and familiar os pops on. I spent many years with a motorola phone and this brings back floods of memories. It operates just like we all remember, even though the Rokr was not a popular phone the motorola brand was and it was everywhere from 2003-2009. The Cingular brand and Jack icon make me happy. It is basic AF, with only 9 options I’m fully through it a few unceremonious minutes

But wait! The Rokr has a memory card still full of early ougt hits still on it. Keane, The Killers and Jets “are you gonna be my girl”! the speakers are awful. I am shocked this was acceptable, but at the time it was a wow. The 512 mb card is full with 83 songs on it.

Its clunky, its slower then I remember the motorolas being. It just has the ipod music player, not the iTunes store so adding music on the fly is not a reality yet.

The Flop

Apple scheduled the iPod nano unveiling on the same day as the release of the Rokr. The Nano a success, the Rokr just something to look at in the Cingular store. The relations between Motorola and Apple were bitter and negative. Then Motorola CEO Ed Zander blamed the failure of the Rokr on Jobs and  later accused Apple of purposely undercutting the Rokr. Soon After the Rokr E1 was replaced by the E2, which lacked iTunes support and was superseded by the iTunes-enabled SLVR L7.

The Final Thought

At the time we had our fingers crossed that Apple and Motorola would unveil exactly what we had been dreaming of for years: a mobile phone with Apple industrial and software design, great call quality, and typically ingenious Apple feature simplification. ingenious Apple feature simplification. We would have to wait another year for that, The iPhone. But the Motorola E1 rocks got Apples gears turning and a stepping stone to Job’s magnificent Vision. Sometime we must fail to change the world and no one embodies that like Steve.