Playing in the same class, Motorola ROKR EM30 and Sony Ericsson W302 aren't of an equal value. Either of the two is less of a mass market product than Nokia 5310, yet the latter obviously loses to the former virtually on all fronts. The American invention is a smart combination of fashion and music, making a worthy descendant of E8. The W302 model, on the other hand, appears to be a very dubious offer, and seemingly overpriced.

An important point is that Motorola and Sony Ericsson took different paths on their chase of Nokia 5310. W890 was simplified to a huge extent, dropping its A200 platform in favor of a Sagem ODM-developed platform which is now used in W302. The materials, assembly, audio and misc things – everything was curbed and is distinctly different from the senior model. The continuity is just nominal, which is a very ambiguous step, given that the predecessor model was far from perfection itself, though much better than W880, which didn't even have a FM tuner.

The Americans took a smarter step by keeping EM30 pretty close to E8, which actually is little than a new version of the older handset, coming in different colors. The functional simplifications (memory, navigation wheel) help to drop down the price, so by the beginning of the sales the solutions will sell for roughly the same money. It's extremely important that Motorola preserved the fashion impact and even kept the same materials. This makes the solution the best offer in its class in that aspect.

Design and ergonomics

The design of EM30 is ideal… for a piece priced at 200 euros. The extensive usage of metal and various coatings (including a soft-touch surface seen on the back panel) is especially pleasing. The device looks too expensive for its actual price, no simplifications in this aspects are visible. Vice versa, now the gadget is available in two alternate color schemes: silver and red. The latter is very reminiscent of Nokia 5310 in general and of the XpressMusic brand in particular.

An important advantage of W302 consists in its compactness, yet the sky is a bit cloudy on this front – Nokia 5310 is apparently slimmer, at least. Though in comparison with the American competitor the new Walkman looks really airy and lightweight. The design is still a lot duller, anyway. The aluminum piece on the face panel doesn't save the day, the handset looks overly cheap. The price asked for this one, surprisingly is the same with EM30 – 200 euros. Two color variants are available: black and silver.

We would advise Sony Ericsson revising the policy of their ODM producer, the quality of assembly offered by Sagem is too average as displayed against the background of the fine work of Motorola. Let alone the not the best materials around, W302 screeches on pressing and the battery feels very wobbly, you have to stuff an improvised pad under the battery to keep it from jerking all the way around. Nothing of the kind you will discover about EM30, giving the hand a much better feel.

The ergonomics of W302 is better because of the smaller measurements and weight, the more traditional keyboard also adds to this score. We can't say EM30 has a really bad keyboard though, it was changed since the days of E8 – it's now a conventional keypad more on the side of ZN5. An important advantage of Motorola is the availability of so-called control templates: e.g. in the player mode an alternative set of controls becomes available, while the regular phone interface has some of the extra controls blocked and some other necessary once active, which are inactive while you're in the player window. In other words, once you're in the player, a set of extra controls is activated, giving you an easier control over the player functions. W302 only employs the joystick button for doing this stuff, which isn't too practical.

The connectivity options of Motorola are notable for versatility – you get a microUSB slot, a 3.5 mm jack, a microSD slot... Things are much worse with W302, lacking much of this goodness. The Swedish-Japanese manufacturer is very devoted to their habit of preferring 3.5 mm bundled adapters to 3.5 mm jacks nested on the casing, which isn't a good idea – the adapter is always sticking out on the left side, which is plainly annoying. EM30 has a 3.5 mm jack on the top edge, it's very convenient to plug the headset. Unfortunately, the memory card can't be hot-swapped, while W302 doesn't require the battery to be removed prior to swapping cards. The format isn't a widely accepted one - M2.

Audio and player

The key feature of the both devices is to be given a maximum attention in this article. As it was noted earlier, Sony Ericsson is traditionally less versatile. It's still lacking a dedicated sound processing unit, and this model even lacks the signature Clear Audio Experience technology support. As a result, the audio quality is pretty average, apparently yielding to the sounding of EM30. The latter is the best solution of its class as far as the audio quality is concerned.

A big problem W302 is hidden in its speaker, which is just not loud enough. This tells on the ringtones, radio signal output and so on, eventually producing a very strange impression for a music phone. The bundled headset is of a mediocre quality, though Motorola doesn't offer a better set in their box. The hardware part is obviously weaker, in the case of SE, they definitely need to revise their engineering priorities.

The high quality of sound in EM30 is provided by a set of quality chips backed up by a collection of audio codecs, equalizer presets, the brand Spatial Audio technology (which debuted in the E2 model). The Spatial Audio technology by Motorola in the EM30 model has nothing to do with the sound processor architecture, though a well-planned combination of a quality sound chip and a variety of lucky software solutions result in a very pleasing sound. We can't say that Motorola can beat the quality offered by Nokia or Samsung in their latest models, though it is not going to submit to the competitors either, standing a firm ground in the aspects of audio quality, flexibility of settings and sound volume.

The player interface is just as good looking as convenient in use. That's not the best solution around (Nokia handsets of the latest generation offer various skins and more options), though not the worst one as well – something above an average level, quite a good thing indeed. During playback, the track title, performer's name and the album cover are shown, accompanied by a playbar (progressive rewinding supported) and control indicators.

The player supports sorting by performer, track title, genre, the frequency and recency of playing, and so on. The search function has a nice implementation: you can specify search criteria in a variety of fields like track title, performer's name, album title and many others, at times you find this feature very useful scanning though a large number of tracks.

Any of the tracks from the player can be sent over via MMS, E-Mail or Bluetooth. There's a Flight Mode setting available which helps to save the battery charge, resulting in more playback hours. The system of playlists is pretty simple, a newly created playlist is given a title and a storage place (phone memory or flash card), the next thing to do is just to fill the list with the wanted tracks. The following media formats are supported by the phone:

MP3	+
WMA	+
Polyphonic	+, 64 voices
XMF	+
AMR (Voice Tag)	+
AAC	+
AAC+	+
e-AAC+	+
i-Melody	-
SMAF	-
Midi (SMF)	+
SP-Midi	+
RA	+

The player can happily run in the background. A part of the player window stays visible during standby, maximized to its normal state by pressing the up arrow. The device retains a full functionality with player running – you can still use the menus and other applications to the full.

The settings include:

Playback options (looped and random playback)
Five equalizer presets (no support for user presets)
Auto repeat
A2DP Bluetooth broadcasting
Add to a playlist / a selected number of playlists / all of the existing playlists
Set a track as a ringtone

Here we see an important difference from the V8 model – the availability of a set of equalizers, which greatly affect the sounding. In addition to the equalizers, a Bass Boost and a Spatial Audio enhancement modes are available. It's unclear why the user isn't allowed to customize the equalizer presets or configure custom ones.

As far as the radio goes, it's given an interface identical with the MP3 player, though the number of options is rather limited. Three frequency bands of FM1, FM2 and FM3 are available, where you can bookmark favorite stations. The receiver sensibility is pretty high, the model looks like a winner in this sense, if compared to the other solutions form that market segment. The headset sounding is pretty clear and loud, one of the best on the market.

As for W302, Sony Ericsson products are traditionally strong in this field, that's also perfectly true for the media format compatibility. The phone supports the following formats: MP4(AAC,AAC+,eAAC+), MP3 (up to 192Kbit/s officially, though higher bitrates were successfully handled by the device during our tests), M4A, 3GPP (AAC,AMR), AMR-NB, AMR-WB, WAV, G-MIDI1, SP-MIDI, RealAudio 8, eMelody, iMelody, RHZ, XMF, WMA, video MP4 (image: MPEG4, sound: AAC / AMR), 3GPP (image: MPEG4 or H.263, H.264, sound: 3gp, AAC or AMR), RealVideo 8, WMV ASF, graphics formats: JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, SVG, WBMP. In other words, everything you'll ever need.

W302 uses a 2.0 version of the Walkman player. The controls are very convenient. The settings includes looped and random playback, sorting by performer, genre, an enhanced stereo option (which doesn't really affect the audio quality). Progressive track rewinding is supported.

The visualization options are as listed: Album arts (rather small picture), Walkman Lines, Album Lines, Inner twirl. There are two alternate skins available, if these could be named so – an orange and a white patterns (in addition to the default black one), though none of the control elements change colors on switching skins, the only two things affected by the change are the background and font colors. That's just too plain, Nokia are currently offering much more customization liberty in their products.

A flight mode of sorts is supported, but you have to keep the SIM card in as long as you want to use the phone, which is a drawback for a music device. The onboard FM tuner is equally available on W302. The maximum audio volume in the radio mode is quite good, a bit louder than the MP3 playback. RDS and auto search are supported.

The TrackID service available on 302 allows to capture a short fragment of a song playing on the radio for further submission to the web; once the fragment has been detected in the external database, you receive a reply citing the track title and performer's name, offering to buy and download it. A youth audience is sure to find this thing a very interesting addition.

EM30, as well as all of the following Motorola music phones, sport a preinstalled SongID Java applet (based off ShazamID). As guessed from the title, the service is used to find out the proper title of a playing track. You have to record at least a ten-second fragment of the song to go with the service. The mike sensibility is fine enough to leave no problems with this feature. The track database is pretty exhaustive, including all sorts of remixes of existing tracks.

The number of options is maximized as well: once the track title and performer's name were identified, you are prompted to view the album cover, the performer's bio or the band's history, as well as find albums belonging to a similar genre. The Song ID can be sent over via SMS.

A chart listing the most popular IDs is available, it's updated on a weekly basis. All in all, the application interface is pretty convenient, it is no worse (if not actually better) than Sony TrackID, though sporting a relatively smaller and not so frequently updated database, yet most user will never find that out on their own. This is a great addition to the music functionality of EM30.

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Hardware features

The two new handsets have a number of common points in hardware, though the differences are numerous. Firstly, SE is equipped with a worse screen – only offering a 176x220 resolution versus QVGA that is supported by Motorola. W302, on the other hand, wins when exposed to direct sunlight, effectively fighting it with the help of a mirror screen backing. The screens are of a comparable size, W302 (quite out of logics) being marginally larger than W890.

The rest of the differences aren't as notable: EM30 doesn't support 3G and has a weaker battery. The latter thing is to be reviewed thoroughly in a later section of the article, that' s an important point for a music handset. Traditionally, the Walkman is leading in this field.

Model	Motorola ROKR EM30	Sony Ericsson W302
MP3	15:51	22:07
3GP	3:42	3:20

The cameras of the two models is theoretically the same plain 2 Mp unit without auto-focusing and flash. The quality is… on a level quite typical of a secondary feature. Below you will find a comparison of test shots.

Motorola ROKR EM30 / Sony Ericsson W302

The rest of the features are quite comparable, let's remind you of the main specifications:

Interface

As we have already mentioned, Motorola EM30 displays but negligible differences from E8 on the software and hardware fronts alike. The interface was left untouched, the set of menu icons, their arrangement, the preinstalled interface themes – everything is quite the same with ROKR E8. People who have already read the review of that model will hardly find anything new in the description of the basic functionality of EM30, all the changes limited mainly to the sphere of controls and memory management.

In the standby mode, the top bar displays a variety of status indicators ranging from battery charge to Bluetooth activation status. The two functional buttons provide access to menu and misc functions (the same thing is called the Active menu in Nokia phones). The quick menu contains the following items:

+ Reminder type selection
+ Start a new message
+ Change background
+ Create contact
+ Search for BT devices

You can't rearrange the menu items or add new ones, which is a serious limitation of this model.

The user interface can be customized with a variety of available themes, which themselves are also customizable. In the Themes menu, it's possible to design your own theme by experimenting with a variety of parameters like background (which can feature any photo or misc image), background template (mosaic, full screen), the interior and exterior screen logos, the intro and outro splash screens, as well as a number of stylistic tweaks applicable to menu and font design elements. A newly created theme is given a name and a custom set of associated audio signals: default ringtone, message sound, e-mail deliver, voice mail and calendar.

Audio signals can be customized in the profile setting tab. Each theme can have a unique set of default signals associated with it. The profile settings menu allows to create an unlimited number of user profiles, though you can't delete any of the three preinstalled. On creating or modifying a profile four tabs are available, containing the following settings: Theme Title, Ringtone, Signal Type (Song, Vibro, Cobined, Vibro then Song, Mute). Then you proceed to a couple of other tabs where you can tweak the sound volume (7 notches on a scale) and individual ringtones for each signal type, including the calendar event reminder tune.

If you modify one of the preinstalled user themes, you are still safe with an options to undo all the changes and roll the theme back to its default state. A new theme can be created by making a copy of an existing theme and introducing all the necessary changes to the copy after. Motorola phones are only second to Samsung devices in terms of freedom of customizability.

The other options include screen brightness tweaker, splashscreen activation status, screen brightness tweaker (6 notches on a scale), as well as customizable clock type (analog / digital) and shortcut icons. A similar system found a use in S40 3rd Edition Nokia phones, where four application icons are displayed during standby, each activated by pressing the joystick button in the corresponding direction. The icons can be turned off, and their associated functions are selected from a long list of available applications. Two icons can refer to the same application, no limitations here.

A minimized version of the player window is shown on the screen during standby, featuring only the playback controls, the track title and performer's name, as well as the total playback time. By pressing the Up arrow the window is unfolded to its original size, that's pretty helpful and easy so you get back to the full control mode in practically no time. In this full-screen player mode, you can still use any other available menu, feature or action.

Sorting the phonebook records by the initial digits of a phone number applied as a mask in the standby mode is a very handy feature. It's nearly identical to the one found in many Samsung smartphones, though the numbers not present in the contact book aren't included in the search field, which is the only difference from the Samsung products. If you know any combination of digits which is presumed to be present in a person's phone number, simply type it on the keyboard in the standby mode and the phone will respond with a list of contact records which match this mask, displaying the found people's first and last names as well as icons indicating whether a found number is a home, work or mobile one, etc.

There's no real support for multi-tasking, it's impossible to have several applications running at a time, the few exceptions being the specific combinations like browser + messaging service, for instance. The mp3 player can be running in the background, simultaneously with another application, that's a standard feature universally found in all modern phones nowadays.

The main menu has two alternate view modes: icons and list, a total of nine items can be seen in the screen at a time. In addition to the two traditional ways, a Spinner merry-go-round menu is available, a bar comprising six small icons is shown at the bottom of the screen, with one large icon occupying the center. The menu icons are all animated and enjoy some really good graphics. The menu can be quickly navigated by pressing the numerical keys, each corresponding to a correspondingly labeled menu item. Unlike Motorola V8 and the majority of other models by the company, the model doesn't allow to create custom folders in the menu, perhaps that's a temporary limitation of the pre-production sample. On the other hand, you are free to rearrange the menu icons in any imaginable fashion. The menu customization possibilities are quite noteworthy, making the product more user friendly.

The main menu contains the following items (the list may vary depending on the particular model):

W302 uses a modified version of the A100 platform, stripped of the multitasking support and coming with a number of secondary simplifications. Some of our homologues dubbed it A050, yet this is more of a joke than an actual code name. From a technical point of view, this is just a variation of the A100 platform. By the way, a number of interface themes are available.

In the standby mode, the top bar displays a variety of status indicators ranging from battery charge to Bluetooth activation status. The screen clock can vary in size, selectable in the screen options from large and small variants.

The main menu looks quite traditional for the company's products using the A100 platform. The menu icons are arranged into four rows of bright, well-animated icons. A vibro signal is turned on every time you move the selection to another icon, the effect is only active in certain themes.

You can use the numerical buttons for instant menu navigation. In addition to the vertically arranged menu items, some of them may contain side-slide subitems, like in the File Manager or Call log menus, which are listed by pressing the joystick left and right.

The menu enjoys a straight and logical organization; the only flaw that we could mention is the lack of a an option to customize the order of the menu items while Nokia and Motorola make a wide use of this feature in their products. As an example we will mention the shortcut launching the PlayNow service which is used for downloading music tracks and ringtones – many user would prefer to replace it with a more practical shortcut like one opening the profile menu or FM tuner, but so far that's impossible.

Sony Ericsson W302 / Motorola ROKR EM30

Regardless of the simplifications characteristic of the A100 platform in W302, Sony Ericsson's software platform still offers a considerable level of usability. The functionality has been curbed in a way (keep in mind this isn't even A200), but the ergonomics is on a high level, beating Motorola in this aspect. The latter is especially disappointing when you face the lags when working with the menus and applications. However the functionality of the software part of EM30 is higher. Sony Ericsson's solution is more to our liking, even in this limited variant.

SMAPE's opinion

Positioned in the same class, Motorola ROKR EM30 and Sony Ericsson W302 aren't peers. Both devices are less of a mass market product than Nokia 5310, however W302 is clearly overpriced and offers fewer features and a worse balance than its counterpart, so Motorola ROKR EM30 wins the competition.

Author: Ilya Solovyov

SMAPE.com

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