Motorola has apparently been secretly working on a project to capitalise on the popularity of its Pebl handset series, by adding in musical functionality and by launching it onto the market as the Rokr U9.

Moto's Rokr U9

According to a report at Cellpassion, the Rokr U9 looks set to include an external colour display and music controls, as Motorola's Razr 2 already does.

The Rokr U9 looks very similar to Advanced MP3 Player's Pebble player, aka the Datasafe Oomi, which boasts a 2GB storage capacity, support for DRM-protected WMA-encoded tracks, a recordable FM tuner and 12-hour playback. We always wondered why the name changed from Pebble to Oomi...

Unfortunately, no tech specs have been released by Motorola yet, but, as seen in some already leaked pictures, the Rokr U9 looks set to have either a headphone jack or mini USB port at the bottom.

Unfortunately no tech specs have been released by Motorola yet, but, as seen in some already leaked pictures, the Pebl V6 looks set to have either a headphone jack or mini USB port at the bottom.

If its capabilities are based on the Razr 2 though, then users could expect an HTML browser, a two-megapixel camera, Windows Media Player and a host of connectivity applications.

No official release date or retail price has been given by Motorola yet.