My phone is coming up for replacement, and having resisted the urge to buy a separate MP3 player I now want to get a phone that doubles up as a good portable music player. I know lots of phones can play MP3s these days, but the feature often seems to be something of an afterthougt - you have to burrow down into an application menu or a file folder in order to play the MP3s. I want the music-playing features to be right there, easy to access from the top-level menu or even from dedicated music buttons, volume knobs etc. Ability to play WMAs or iTunes files would be nice, although I imagine the latter is only possible on the one Motorola model.
I’ll recommend the model I have, the Nokia 3300. It has a button on the top for direct access to the mp3 player and a removable SD card for storage. I’d suggest, though, that you get an adapter for it so you can use your own headphones with it, instead of the pop-port earbuds it comes with (although those do double as a hands-free headset).