LG Chocolate VX8500 (black, Verizon Wireless)

Pros: up to 2 GB microSD expansion, a2dp, sleek, nice screen

Cons: navigating through mp3 player not as friendly as ipod

Summary: I've had this phone for about 2 months so I am still learning some functions. I bought it mainly for it's mp3 playing. I also bought a 2gb micro SD card ($90-$100). I have almost 500 songs on it with about 400 megs remaining. Most of my songs are 64 bit and some are 128 bit. Both sound great. You choose which bitrate you want when you rip from cd which is extremely easy using WMP. Synching audio files from your PC to the phone is pretty easy but can be a bit tedious. You'll need to buy a kit for about $30 with the software and special cable to connect the phone to your USB port. It also comes with earbud phones with the special connector that attaches to the phone. They sound good and when you take a call with them the caller's voice (like the HT820's mentioned below) is in stereo. You can also answer the phone with these headphones while listening to music. If you do plan on using this phone for music play, like me, you will need to charge it daily. I plan on buying an additional battery. They have batteries that are 33% larger than the one that comes with the phone. What I like most about the phone is how it sounds with my Motorola HT820 bluetooth noise cancelling headphones. Chocolate supports a2dp which is a necessity in order to work with the HT820's. The music sounds awesome and no wires. If a call comes in, you can answer it which pauses the music. A microphone built into the right headphone works very good and is invisible. When your done with the call, press the right-side button again and the music picks up where you left off. Volume control, pause, and track advance control also on headset. Headphones are a bit bulky and alien-looking but comfortable. If you want a Chocolate for music I strongly recommend the HT820's. (I use Plantronics Voyager 520 as my primary bluetooth for conversations and it works great...no echo on either end and it can be turned up loud. This was the 3rd bluetooth I bought after the first two were very lacking) If you buy the case for this phone I suggest you cut out the square plastic piece that covers the dialpad. Trying to press the dial through the plastic is possible but annoying. The dial does not work like the ipod, they are press-enabled buttons not scrollable. Too bad. One thing I don't like is that when I have the player set to 'shuffle' it seems to go through a lot of the same songs each time I start the mp3 function. As for the phone the functionality takes some getting used to but once you do it is real easy to operate. I'll add more to this as I discover more.