Music Anytime, Anyplace: MP3 Phones

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Music Anytime, Anyplace: MP3 Phones
from Jon Alain Guzik

You might have a tough time convincing some die-hard music fans to mothball their iPods. But increasingly, consumers are realizing that music phones are a convenient alternative to carrying around both an MP3 player and a cell phone.

According to a recent study conducted by mobile-research firm M:Metrics, 31 percent of consumers who own both a music phone and a digital music player use their phone as their primary music device.

Not everyone wants or needs the decked-out iPhone at $399. So what is the budget-conscious consumer looking to buy a music-playing cell phone do to? Fear not. We found fully functional phones that were a little easier on the wallet.

One of the newest phones to hit the market is Motorola's MOTOROKR Z6m. The Z6m features everything you'd expect in a new model, like an integrated music player, USB 2.0, Bluetooth stereo, a 2-megapixel camera, and a Linux-based operating system. As an added bonus, the phone comes pre-installed with XM radio mobile with 20 channels of content, which provides a nice break from your MP3 library. And all this is packed into a slim little slider phone package that weighs only 3.7 ounces and carries a suggested price of $99.99 after rebates - a great deal at an outstanding price.

For the casual music listener, the Samsung Juke, priced at $100, is a great option. It bears a resemblance to the iPod Shuffle: It's a mere 1.2 inches wide and flips open like a switchblade when you press on one of its corners. Although the Juke doesn't have a memory expansion slot, it has a good deal of internal storage (2 gigabytes), enough to hold about 500 tunes. In addition, you can send and receive text messages, shop for ring tones and accept or ignore an incoming call - all with the phone closed.

Also in the under-$100 range is the Wild Card from Virgin Mobile at $99.99. The clamshell-design phone comes with dual color screens, a 1.3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, speakerphone, and a handy QWERTY keyboard for text-messaging junkies. One neat feature is Headliner, Virgin Mobile's personalized mobile music magazine. For $2.49 per month, users can access concert tour updates, music news, and artist information. "Headliner" also works as a jukebox, streaming music that allows the customer to listen to individual tracks for 25 cents each.

The $269 Sony Ericsson W580i for AT&T comes with a full range of features, like a 2-megapixel camera, video recording and playback, Bluetooth, and mobile email. One of its best features is the Walkman media player, which provides excellent sound. The W580i comes in a slim slider design in a variety of colors, and weighs about 3.3 ounces.

Helio's latest, the Ocean, comes equipped with a 2-megapixel camera with video recording, stereo Bluetooth, full QWERTY keyboard, and fully enabled Web capabilities on Helio's EV-DO network. It retails for $295. The network offers a range of content options, including a few for music and video. The Ocean gets up to 15 hours of music playback from a single battery charge and supports an array of audio and video formats, including MP3, AAC and WMA audio, and MPEG4 and H.264 video.

If Danish aesthetics are your thing, the Samsung Serenata is the phone for you. A joint venture between Samsung and Bang & Olufsen, the Serenata's biggest selling point is that it's the first to feature external speakers. (It looks more like a high-end remote control than a fully functional cell phone.) Pricing hasn't been announced yet, but like most other B&O products, it probably won't be cheap.

By and large, music phones aren't likely to deliver the same level of high-quality sound that standalone players provide. But many come close - and with so many affordable choices, music phones are quickly making converts of the skeptics.