Music Phones You Can Buy Today
You may already know that you can tune your productivity with music — why not make it easy on yourself and do so with your cell phone? I get excited when I see announcements about fancy new music-playing mobile phones like the twistingly cool Nokia 5700 Xpress Music and the Sony Ericsson W580 Walkman with integrated pedometer and hot orange accents. Unfortunately, neither is available today. Don’t even get me started about the iPhone, because I can’t buy that today either, even if I did want to spend almost $500 while locking myself into two years with Cingular.
There are some pretty nice music phones that you can get today, fortunately, and for a lot less than the iPhone. Here are four possibilities in the under $100 range (that’s with a service contract, natch), one for each of the major U.S. carriers.
LG LX550 Fusic (Sprint) — This clamshell phone (pictured above) looks quite a bit like an iPod with its circular music controls. It comes with three colored faceplates so you can customize its look. Offers EV-DO and Bluetooth support, a 1.3 megapixel camera, speakerphone, and even an FM transmitter so you can play your music using an FM radio. $79.99 with two-year service agreement.
Nokia 5300 Xpress Music (T-Mobile) — Slide it open with one hand to access the keypad, then slide it shut to use it as a music player; the music controls are arrayed along the side of the casing. It supports Bluetooth, offers a 1.3 megapixel camera, and stores up to 1,500 songs with an upgraded memory card. T-mobile offers it in black and lilac versions for $99.99 with a two-year service agreement.
Sony Ericsson W810i (Cingular) — It’s not skinny and it doesn’t flip or slide. It’s just your basic candy bar, with a bunch of nice features including a 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth support, and an FM radio. You’ll want to invest in a memory stick as it comes with just enough space for 25 songs. $74.99 with two-year service agreement.
LG Chocolate (Verizon) — How can you resist Cherry, Mint, Strawberry, or White Chocolate? I don’t know that I want this phone after reading user reviews, but naming it after one of the most popular flavors in the world was marketing genius. This slider gives you a 1.3 megapixel camera, speakerphone, Bluetooth, and expansion with a Micro SD memory card to hold all your music. Not everyone likes it’s touch-sensitive keypad though. $99.99 with two-year service agreement.
These options don’t even begin to exhaust the possibilities. They do, however, suggest what you might find if you’re in the market for a phone that can make calls and play music reasonably well. If you want your phone to do even more, check out our feature How to Pick Your Next Smartphone. If you’re curious what phones other WWD readers use and what they think of them, visit the open thread What Mobile Phone Do You Use?
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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Don’t overlook the Palm Treo 700p . As well as a PDA and cell phone with a camera, it is an MP3 player and comes with stereo earbuds with a microphone. When you listen to music and a call comes in, your music goes on hold to allow you to take the call and then picks up right where you left off. So far I have replaced four devices with one without even counting the Internet, e-mail, and AIM.
The trick is keeping your friends and boss from knowing you have all this connectivity so you can listen to your music in peace. (Actually, you can listen to your music uninterrupted while using all the features but the phone).
The problem with music phones is that nobody wants them.
If they did, then the existing smartphones on the market (as noted above, the Treo line) would be selling better relative to the fashion phones (e.g. the RAZR, which is running software almost unchanged from the V600/V5* series introduced, what, five years ago?). Besides, many of the smartphones can also play live shoutcast feeds from anywhere, which an iPod can’t.
What people want are the trendy shiny things they see in the commercials. They don’t care about their capabilities, musical or not.