I've been looking into possibly picking up an Ipod Nano for exercise purposes... but I figure it might be easier if I just get a phone that has mp3 function. So, which phones have the best music player functionalities? I'd mostly be using LAME mp3, would like a graphic equalizer, expandability, good output, gapless?, and good controls

If you can wait a few months, there's always the iPhone.

Tape and a shuffle?

Seriously, why not use a dedicated media player, do you jog with your phone?
Because i don't think that much of anything on a phone is good for jogging.

Well, $500 + contract is somewhat high. It will take some years until the price will drop like it did with SE W800i for example.

I've got a Sony Ericsson w900i and I love it

Music Player for exercise purpose should be light and small, right? I recommend picking one of SonyEricsson's phones. Nokia's phons are kind of bulky. I've been using W800i for years and very happy with it.

However, if I were you, I would go with shuffle .

As others have said, your best bet would be just to get a small player like the second generation (2G) iPod shuffle. It comes in a 1GB capacity and only costs $79. You can get a small discount if you are a student, I think the price will drop down to either $75 or $70 but I am not sure.

Dedicated music playing devices are almost always better than some attempts at having an all-in-one device.

Well, the idea is to use one device instead of the three that I'm currently using (pda, iriver 20 gb mp3 player, cell phone), because carrying around those three is kinda bulky, and while I take my mp3 player everywhere I go, I carry the cell phone less, and the pda least. By putting those functions in the mp3 player, I'm guarnteed to have the cell phone and pda on me at all times...

If your going to be running, then why don't you just take your hard drive player? I'm against upgrading just to consolidate, since most multifunction devices manage to do many things badly at once.

And looking at your post, you are looking for something with a Nano's features, and wishing that it fit into a phone, which i dont think that it does.

Additionally, these PDA cell phones occupy more space than most 40GB audio players and have a larger touch screen. Basically, these cell phones really aren't meant to be used while exercising as they are fragile. There are some smaller Sony phones which will probably be your best bet but they don't offer the PDA functionality. Basically, you are stuck with getting a fragile all-in-one phone or you are stuck with getting a music enabled cell phone and still carrying around your PDA.

Eh, I wouldn't need full pda functionality, I realized that on my current PDA, despite its flexibility, its only real use comes with alarms and notes reminding me of things-- easily reproducible on a cell phone.

Benefit of having a cellphone-cum-musicplayer is that you just carry one device around.

Check out Nokia 6233. It's small, light, quite rugged, and IMO acceptable quality of sound reproduction in the open.

Plus, it's not based on Symbian so you don't have to be afraid it will be infected with the Symbian virus.