By: ROY FURCHGOTTAT a tree-trimming party at his Chicago co-op apartment, Eric Spanitz supplied seasonal music, a mix of Bing Crosby and "A Charlie Brown Christmas," which issued from a certain well-known compact portable electronic device — a mobile phone. About a year ago Mr. Spanitz, a professor of management at Lake Forest University in Illinois and a business consultant, finally decided to buy a phone and a music player, but he didn't want to carry two devices. Instead he bought a Sony- Ericsson W800i Walkman phone that combines both. "I use it more often than I expected," he said of the music function, with which he listens to tunes on plane trips and in his hotel room, and even uses his selection of 60s rock, jazz, classical and German electronica to serve as a D.J. at impromptu gatherings. "The constant reaction is, 'Where are you hiding the speakers? That sound can't come from the phone,' " he said.
Speculation that Apple Computer will announce a combination iPod and phone at the Macworld convention in San Francisco next month has fueled interest among people who, like Mr. Spanitz, don't want to carry multiple devices — even though most phones already have multimedia players that handle music.
The problem seems to be that few multimedia phones, if any, are as easy to use as an iPod. Of course, most people pick phones primarily for the phone features or service plan, but for those who put high importance on music, there is a subset of media phones designed with the music fan in mind. A few can give an iPod a run for the money.
At the top of the list is the Motorola iTunes phone from Cingular ($200 after $50 rebate with a two-year contract). The handset is a modified Motorola RAZR, called the V3i, with a music note button that takes you right to your songs. The V3i uses the same menu system as the iPod. The phone lacks the iPod click wheel, so an up/down/left/right button substitutes.
The phone screen displays not only the basic song information, but also a picture of the CD cover — if you have downloaded the image into your iTunes file. Plugged into a computer with iTunes software, the V3i practically sets itself up. With a few button clicks it randomly fills with songs. Like an iPod, the phone can recharge from its U.S.B. connection or from a wall socket and works equally well with Mac or PC.
The sound quality is Pod-worthy, but the V3i does have its limitations. For one, it can hold only 100 songs (6.9 hours of music, its maker says.), and the memory cannot be expanded, as is true for most music phones. Because Cingular does not sell music over its network (just ring tones), you can't buy songs and have them instantly transmitted into your phone.
Another Cingular music phone, the Sony-Ericsson Walkman W810i (the newer version of Mr. Spanitz's phone is $99 after a $100 rebate with a two-year contract), offers a memory slot to store a heap of music, but uses only Sony's proprietary Memory Stick cards, which are frequently more expensive than generic memory.
A "candy bar"-style phone, it has an adapter for other brands of headsets, although the Sony in-ear headphones that are included are decent — crisp sounding, if lacking in bass. Setting the built-in equalizer to "bass" helps.
Loading songs should be easy but proved initially glitchy in a reporter's test. Plugging the phone into a U.S.B. port sets it up as a drive; then you can drag and drop songs. The W810i should recognize music and store it properly, but it didn't work in the test. When music was dropped directly into the folder labeled MP3 on the card and the phone restarted, it worked perfectly.
The Sony does pump out a lot of sound through its three tiny speakers. While it is loud enough for small gatherings like Mr. Spanitz's, fidelity is the quality of a 1960s transistor radio.
The Walkman phone offers 50 streaming radio stations through MobiRadio for $8.99 a month. Channels range from rap to classical, but the tinny sound quality and signal drop-outs will disappoint hi-fi fans. The built-in FM tuner (found under the Entertainment tab, not Music) sounds far better at no extra charge.
From Verizon Wireless, the LG VX8500 Chocolate phone ($99 after $50 rebate with a two-year contract) has plenty of cool factor, but how much you like it depends on your regard for the buttonless, touch-sensitive control pad. The red backlight glow will attract admiring glances, but it takes practice to develop the right touch to operate the pad.
The slider phone has a hot button to take you right to your music, and loading songs, while not flawless, worked with some persistence. Sound quality was a bit thin but acceptable.
The display while music is playing shows the album cover in a larger size than others, a nice graphic touch.
Browsing Verizon's V-Cast music store on the Chocolate displays only three artists at a time, making shopping laborious. If you already know what you want, it's easier. Downloads direct to the phone from the V-Cast store are $1.99 and you get two copies, one to the phone and a higher-quality copy for your computer. You can also use your computer to buy a single copy from the V-Cast store for 99 cents, which can be loaded onto the phone's SD card by U.S.B.
Sprint 's most tune-oriented phone is the Fusic ($30 after a $50 rebate with a two-year contract, through Dec. 31). But Sprint tries to appeal to the music fan not so much with the phone as with its service, producing exclusive live music and phonecast TV shows for its customers.
Many of the special features and much of the exclusive content, however, are geared toward selling music through Sprint. Shopping screens are neatly laid out showing an artist's most popular downloads as well as a comprehensive list of tunes. The downloads are remarkably fast, but the cost of that convenience is a steep $2.50 per song — plus the minutes spent downloading. As with Verizon, you get two copies of the song, one direct to the phone and one for your computer, but you can't save money by buying direct through your computer.
While you can download on an economy plan, the per-kilobyte charge makes it expensive. Frequent downloaders may save over all using the more expensive Power Vision plan, which includes some data downloads. Other add-ons also add to the price, like 20 channels of Sirius radio, which cost $6.95 a month plus tax.
In a test of the Fusic, loading songs through the U.S.B. connection was stymied by a card-reader problem that the company said was being addressed, but was easily accomplished by putting the micro SD card in a reader and dragging unprotected MP3 files to the card's MP3 folder.
Sound quality was better with MP3s than with the streaming radio, but was greatly improved in both cases by other brands of earbuds.
One novel feature of the Fusic is its FM transmitter, which lets you send the music from your phone to an FM radio receiver.
Then you can use the phone not only like a D.J., as Mr. Spanitz does; you can go him one better at your next party and be an in-house dance club D.J. over your radio.
