Nokia 5310 XpressMusic

A far cry from Nokia's clunky 5300 slider from just two years ago, this truly bite-size candy bar is 9 grams lighter than the W890i, about 0.25mm thinner and less wide by about 6.6mm (it's also advertised as .01 inches slimmer, but we couldn't tell). While we had no trouble stashing the 5310 in our skinny pantaloons, USB file transfers required reconfiguring the settings before we were able to drag and drop tunes. Like the W890i, removing the battery cover revealed a MicroSD slot that can handle up to 4GB. Unlike the W890i, the 5310 comes with a glorious 3.5mm jack. Overall, if you want a music-driven phone — and don't care about expedient web browsing or quality snapshots, you're not likely to find a better handset for this kind of money.

WIRED Excellent sound quality. Able to accept calls not only while USB-connected, but also *during* file transfers. Convenient external music controls. 3.5mm jack (can't stress this enough). Tween alert: sufficiently loud external speaker great (annoying) for public places.

TIRED Flashless 2.0 MP camera. Dated, sluggish OS. Only 1GB card included. Dinky earbuds are literally a foot shorter than iPod buds. Only 17-second vid clips. Voice recordings limited to 58 seconds. Ours came stocked with a Panic at the Disco track (promptly deleted, thank you very much).

• Style: Candybar
• Manufacturer: Nokia
• Price: $50 (with 2-year contract)