Motorola/Apple ROKR iTunes phone

When the iTunes Moto-Apple phone was finally unveiled I was sat in a vault in London Bridge staring at Microsoft's latest batch of mice and keyboards (more of that later). The ROKR E1 handset is, of course, a white number, though the design is suprisingly sedate considering the two companies involved in its creation. It's also set a few bottom lips a-quiver at its capped storage capacity, which limits listeners to just 100 tracks no matter how large your memory card. This is due to some sort of "licensing issues", which is fast becoming the standard excuse for any crap aspect of a music player. Tracks are loaded randomly as per the iPod shuffle, or you can sit and do it by hand if you feel moved to do so.

There will be no over the air downloads - so no buying tracks straight from the iTunes store (since that would annoy the network providers who have their own music stores). It costs $249 from the Apple Store (US) and is available in North America via Cingular. It'll be out with the Carphone Warehouse in mid-September, then with O2, followed by Orange, Virgin Mobile, BT Mobile and other top retailers throughout September and October. Not Vodafone for some reason.