Motorola flashes music phones

One of the new handsets, E680i, is designed to let people transfer, store and catalog music. It can be used with Bluetooth headphones. The phone is compatible with formats such as MP3 and WMA. It also features an FM radio receiver, video-shooting and playback capabilities, and handwriting recognition and e-mail functions, Motorola said. The phone will be available in the Asia-Pacific region in April.

The second handset, the E725, has EV-DO(Evolution Data Optimized) network capability that enables wireless downloads of music and video. It can be synchronized with a PC and has up to 2GB of storage on the optional removable memory card, the company said. The E725 will be available in the Americas in the second half of 2005.

Motorola also said it will launch a new handset China in the second half of this year. The E685 has an MP3 player with a stereo headset jack and a camera. It can be connected to a PC for transferring music to the phone.

Prices of the new phones were not announced.

Separately, Motorola and MTV introduced "Hijacked" handsets with jointly developed content for the youth market. They will feature specially designed SMS (Short Message Service) templates, preloaded wallpaper, screensavers, phonebook IDs,games, ring tones and alerts. The models are slated for Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Brazil and the Asia-Pacific region.