Motorola E398 was introduced in Q1 2004. MobileBurn reviews the Motorola E398 and writes, “The E398 is a bit larger than other phones in its class, assuming that you consider phones such as the K700i to be in the same class (even though it lacks a memory card slot). Coming in at 110g with SIM and TransFlash memory card, it is not the lightest of phones. Nor the smallest, at 108mm x 46mm x 21m. But that mass (I don’t want to call it ‘bulk’) serves a good purpose. This phone is very solid. Everything about the feel, fit, and finish suggest that the phone can dish it out as well as take it. I find the black soft-touch rubber compound to be the perfect material for a phone cover. It is very easy to grip, comfortable, warmer to the touch, and it does not attract fingerprints like the current crop of black glossy lacquer finishes we have seen in the past year. You still have to worry about fingerprints on the display, of course, but that could probably be dealt with by adding a glare reducing screen protector, such as those sold by Boxwave.”

MyWorldPhone reviews the Motorola E398 and writes, “the rest of the device is pretty slick, too. The camera appears to be a decent VGA unit with an assist-light. There is a new TransFlash card slot for storage. For those of you not aware of TransFlash (called T-Flash for a short time), it is a new format developed by Sandisk and Motorola that is about 25% the size of a normal SD card, and is intended specifically for mobile phones.”

Mobile-Review reviews the Motorola E398 and writes, “The phone’s design is performed in calm manner, it is not screaming. The edges were slightly rounded, this creates good impression from overall phone’s shape. The plastic which is similar to rubber by tactile impressions is used for the construction (back cover of T68m was similar)… It is pleasant to hold the phone in one’s palm, it does not slip out even if your hands are wet. Another advantage of such plastic is that it is not mat, it does not leave marks. In order to underline the difference of plastic, keyboard was made of simple material. The buttons are big and are located in terrace shape, the work with them is comfortable. I cannot say that the keyboard is ideal, but it cannot be called bad either.”

iMobile reviews the Motorola E398 and writes about display, “The E398 is brought to life with a single 65,536 colour LCD display at 176 x 220 pixels. The user interface has been changed from previous Motorola models but there are the similarities; no big learning curve when it comes to operating the menu. Special themes can be applied to the user interface as well, giving it a whole new look and feel for your moods. ”

The Register reviews the Motorola E398 and writes, “We played several ringtones and music files downloaded from T-Mobile’s Mobile Jukebox. For comparison, we played the same files on Sony Ericsson’s K700i. Of the two handsets, the E398 was noticeably better. There was less background noise. The quality of sound from the E398 was better than the noise that comes out of speakers typically built into computers. We liked the weighty, tactile feel of the phone in our hand, especially playing the vibration effect with base sounds in music. Motorola’s claim that the E398 is loud compared to other phones is justified but we did wonder when a loud phone would come in handy: maybe as a tiny alternative to a boombox for a few friends meeting for lunch in the park? For listening through headphones, there is an FM radio stereo headset.”

OSNews reviews the Motorola E398 and writes, “Regarding applications, the phone comes with support for email, MMS, SMS, EMS, calendaring, the Motorola in-house web browser (renders the OSNews.com site really nicely with both the cHTML and WAP versions) and a slew of pre-installed applications: a really funky looking mp3 player, a pinball game and more. I also installed some MIDP-2.0 games and they worked really well (I downloaded them via my Mac and then used my Mac’s Bluetooth to send the games over and install them - worked like a charm). My Mac also supports the e398 out of the box with iSync and so I synced all my contacts from the Powerbook to the Phone very easily, via Bluetooth.”