Thanks to T-Mobile, starting July 7, US residents will be able to purchase Motorola’s Rokr E8. The device will be made available for the price of $199, with a two-year service agreement.

The one thing that really makes this smartphone special is its keyboard. It can go through a series of successive phases, each one revealing a certain number of buttons, depending on the tasks users want their phone to perform.

By pushing one button, the phone turns into a music player. As the device does not feature 3G or wireless music downloads, users can copy songs from their PCs onto their phones by using Windows Media Player 11 and they can also tune in to an FM radio station. With regard to supported music file types, the Rokr E8 is quite permissive, allowing users to play AAC, AAC+, MP3, WAV and RealAudio.

The phone comes with a 2GB internal memory but also with a microSD slot that can expand storage to 8GB.

Music is not everything Motorola’s device can do: it features 2 Mp camera, Web browser and Bluetooth. With a 320 x 240 resolution, the screen brings users a 262,000-color display.

Also this week, the new MOTOZINE ZN5 camera phone was launched. This device is the result of the collaboration between phone-maker Motorola and imaging giant Kodak. ZN5 features Kodak's Perfect Touch Technology, which will allow users to create panoramic images composed of up to three photos.

Now that Motorola has two separate phones with outstanding music player and camera features, it is probably just a question of time before both are brought together into one even more complex device.