Lifted from my Mobile Music Blog:

Engadget says it’s got real photos of the elusive iTunes phone from Motorola, otherwise known as the E790.

And I’ve got to say it looks pretty disappointing. It’s not much of a looker, and the iTunes software’s been crammed in the same old crappy Moto UI — begging the question of why, exactly, it’s taken so long to get this thing out. Add to that the use of TransFlash memory cards, let alone having the card sit under the battery, precluding hot swapping. Ask Nokia how using an unpopular memory card format and not allowing hot swapping played out… 2+ years ago.

Perhaps this is part of a nefarious plan by Steve Jobs and co. to undermine the mobile phone as music platform. After all, people will have the expectation that an “iPod phone”, as it will come to be known, will be the best music-playing mobile phone. If it sucks, they’ll assume all the others will suck, too, thereby heading off the supposed killing of the iPod by mobile phones for a little while yet.

I’m not sure this really represents much of an improvement on previous prototypes…

—–>Follow us on Twitter too: @russellbuckley and @caaarlo