2005 ROKR phone

Before the iPhone, there was the ROKR phone. An ill-fated collaboration between Apple and Motorola, the ROKR was intended to showcase the power of iTunes on a mobile phone back in 2005.

Unfortunately, it was a disaster. You’d think any phone that’s the first to support iTunes would have a strong musical offering, but not the ROKR. Despite accommodating microSD cards up to 1GB in size, the firmware only enables it to hold a maximum of 100 songs, which undermined its position as a music-oriented phone. This was compounded by slow transfer speeds (it didn’t support USB 2.0) and a complete lack of wireless transfer capability.

The nail in the coffin was Apple’s simultaneous announcement of the iPod nano, which Motorola CEO Ed Zander claimed undercut the ROKR. Apple learned its lesson, and launched the very first iPhone just two years later.