Product Information Summary
Today's best price:
In association with Amazon
Motorola E398
The stylish Motorola E398 music phone comes with an exceptional stereo surround sound system. You can listen to MP3 songs downloaded from your computer, snap pictures with a built-in VGA-resolution digital camera and as a tri-band GSM phone, it can connect to mobile networks in most parts of the world.
Key features: The first thing that many people like to do on a music phone, or on any new phone is to find a ringtone that reflects the new owner's taste and personality. The Motorola E398 lets you set both polyphonic and MP3 songs as your ringtones. The product also includes Motomixer software for mixing your own MIDI ringtones.
When you want to listen to MP3 music on the phone, you can copy songs from your computer to a TransFlash memory card. A 64MB card is included (capacity may vary by country) with the product. If you already have a memory card reader that has an SD card slot, you can fit the TransFlash card into the SD slot with an adapter. You can listen to music through the phone's loudspeakers or use the headphones. The loudspeakers reproduce surprisingly good sound for such a small device, even better than loudspeakers found on many home computers. The secret for the good sound is the two built-in loudspeakers that can reproduce stereo surround sound. That's right, stereo surround sound on a phone.
A visible and fun element on the phone consists of series of lights on the sides of the unit that flash when someone is calling you. You can define the rhythm and frequency how the lights will flash.
The Motorola E398 doesn't come with an FM radio, which is a bit odd for a phone designed for music, but its good stereo surround sound system may make you forgive the omission. VBR (Variable Bit Rate) MP3 songs won't play on the phone (unless Motorola has updated the phone software for new units).
The bright color screen is easy to read, its resolution is 176x220 pixels. The built-in digital camera can capture VGA (640x480 pixels) resolution images. Surprisingly, the camera software can't record video clips, but it can play them.
You can send and receive photos as MMS messages, or as email messages over GSM networks, but you can forget about receiving MP3 music over the air. The phone uses GPRS for data communications and it is simply too slow for music files that are megabytes in size. As a tri-band GSM phone, it has world-wide coverage. For close-range communications, you can use an USB cable for hooking up to a PC and Bluetooth for wireless connectivity.
Who likes this product: MP3 ringtones, MP3 music with surround stereo sound, lights that flash when the phone rings make this phone a youth favorite, but you can always switch the lights off if you don't feel quite that young anymore.
Style: The Motorola E398 is an elegant black and silver, or blue and silver device. Its edges are rounded and made of non-slippery material, so it is nice to hold in the hand. The phone is small and thin, but not as thin as, for example, the Motorola RAZR.
Value for money: The Motorola E398 is very good value for an MP3 music phone, even without the FM radio. Excellent sound quality, beautiful style and flashing lights make this a good choice for younger phone users.
