ROKR kill'em a... both

I'm surprised MOTO ROKR E8 wasn't even mentioned by el'reg here. The E8 is definitely better than N96 and that blown up Plymouth^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Sony&Ericsson of yours :)

Fanboys - I dont get 'em

First they whinge that the Jesus phone doesn't win the smart phone category and then they whinge when it wins the music phone category.

They wont be happy until we build a giant shine and sacrifice 1000 virgins at the alter of the great Jobs.

Thankfully if this were to happen those virgins are likely to be Jesus Phone Fanboys because apparently they go to parties and discuss phones and never get laid.

bah@jesusphone

Can't even find them on sale locally.

As for music phones, I agree with some of the posts prior, HTC does make quite a number of music-oriented phones. Heck, my TyTN pipes out good quality sounding music too...

Penguin. Because I long to liberate my TyTN from the clutches of Redmond and run Linux on it.

I find the Nokia 6500 Slide and....

WH-700 Stereo Headset combo to make for a very potent music phone.

I've used the SE W series music phones. And, while they're nice, SE tend to screw them up as good all-round multimedia phones by limiting the camera functionality.

When my beloved SE W810 got pinched I opted for the Nokia 6500 Slide and WH-700 Combo as a replacement.

The insurance company initially tried to offer me a SE W910 as a settlement. However, after feeling how flimsy the damned thing was I wouldn't accept it. Luckily, for me, the 6500S got discounted the next day, and I was able to get that instead. And, since I only had to pay a $150 (NZ) excess charge for the whole package, I was supremely happy with it.

I've read a lot of negative reports regarding the 6500S' buggy firmware. However, I immediately upgraded to the newest when I got mine and have had no problems with it.

The music player is quite good and takes a lot of it's functionality from the XpressMusic series player - not the "say and play" function though. It does all that I want it to: sorts and selects by album, artist, genre; allows for custom play-lists and custom eq settings; shuffle and repeat; displays the album art, etc..

The WH-700 Stereo Headset I can't praise highly enough. The sound quality is fantastic and competes well with anything SE would include in their packages. And, it definitely blows away that crap that comes with the iPhone. It has volume and player forwarding controls built into the mic dongle, a nice storage box with a somewhat odd cable management system, and is made of very stylish chrome and black material. Nokia was even thoughtful enough to include a 2.5 to 3.5 mm adaptor in the kit.

Another bonus for me was the appearance of the whole kit: A lot of music phones tend to be geared toward teenagers. So, they're brightly coloured and made of plastic. While I personally don't mind this, I'd look like a tool with such a phone, as I'm a 46 year old man who needs to project a certain image because of the industry I work in. However, I needn't concern myself with this when the 6500S is within the sight of others. The stainless steel casing, with high gloss black accents, looks very flash without being over the top and outlandish.

Anyway, enough of my praise-singing. ;)

"And who gives a sod if a phone has a standard 3.5mm jack?"

Me.

My reason: My mobile gets used more like an mp3 player with a phone function rather than vice versa, so headphone/earphone choice is more important *to me* than - gasp! - the oh so arduous hassle of yanking the 'phones from the mobile and speaking into the handset itself when I take the occasional call.

There's your answer. Happy now? Guess what? "You" are not "everybody".

Following on...

Q: Who gives a sod if a [object] has a standard [interface]?

A: Most folk prefer non-proprietery equipment. Except those who don't know there's an alternative, those who have money to get around the limitations of said proprietery equipment, or those who didn't understand the question.