Motorola's long-awaited iTunes phone is revealed

Mobile phone giant Motorola has finally revealed its iTunes based phone, the ROKR, which integrates Apple's hugely successful iPod software and allows users to store up to a hundred songs on the device.

The company, which is the second largest manufacturer of handsets in the world after Nokia, has been working on the device for several months. It will now be distributed exclusively in the USA by Cingular Wireless.

Like all iPod devices, it syncs up with the iTunes application on Mac or PC, and music purchased through the iTunes Music Store or ripped from CDs can be added to the phone - which automatically pauses the songs when an incoming call is detected, and unpauses when you end a call.

However, while the device has been touted by Apple and Motorola as a major leap forward for music-playing mobile phones, critics have pointed to a number of major limitations to both the hardware and software.

The hardware itself is a standard "candy-bar" phone which has no extra interface features to allow for the iPod functionality, thus removing the spin-wheel interface which is seen as one of the biggest advantages of Apple's players.

It's restricted to a hundred songs being loaded on, regardless of how large the memory card in the device is - presumably an effort to avoid cannibalising sales of the iPod range - and in purely aesthetic terms, it lacks the instant appeal of devices such as Motorola's RAZR or even Apple's own iPod nano, which was also launched this week.

It is regardless an interesting step towards a specialised mobile phone - in this instance, the focus is on music, while Sony Ericsson has created phones that focus on camera functionality.

Nokia's N-Gage remains the only strong example of a phone that specialises in game playing - but if devices such as the ROKR prove popular, it seems likely that more phones with interface systems such as D-pads will eventually result.