and the recessed connector on the iphone is not a protection feature….its an apple mod to use their 20 buck headphones.

Having said that, I’ve never witnessed said yoofs discussing audio quality or waving £269 phones around… so I’m not sure the original observation is valid.

I’d suggest you explain where “round here” is and what “pass-the-parcel” means. And also check whether you can distinguish between a ringtone and a music track. Round where I am, (Chicago) kids and adults consume from phones and iPods with earbuds and headphones.

WRT bluetooth headphones, I’ve not tested any yet, but given the big deal Apple made about selecting 2G over 3G due to battery-life I suspect they were considering that…

I’d suggest you spend more time watching what people under the age of 20 do with their phones. Round here they all walk around playing music on their phones as if it was a mini-ghetto blaster. I’ve used mine as the accompaniment for pass-the-parcel at children’s parties a number of times.

Also, you’re dead wrong about needing a “proprietary dock” to connect to external speakers. All you need is an 8th inch stereo plug and possibly the $10 adapter so it’ll fit.

I agree that the special size of the iPhone jack is an annoyance, but I’ll bet you that within a year, most headphone and patch-cord makers will have slimmed down their cords so that they fit. I’ll cry you a river for your extra $10 until then. As for Bluetooth stereo headsets, Apple obviously have their heads up their asses about that, and the stunningly mediocre sales of the iPod line are probably due entirely to this missing feature.

Jesus.

1. dead-easy to load music on
2. dead-easy to navigate said music ON the device
3. use ANY standard pair of headphones
4. Have speakers built-in good enough to use in most situations (playing cards with friends, taking a shower, in the car, etc). Not necessarily blast a party by any means, but able to be heard and with decent quality
5. support stereo Bluetooth

To be 100% honest, I don’t think there’s a cellphone on the market that completely masters this. The iPhone obviously has the first 2 in the can. The N95 (or any other Nokia with the bottom three) comes nowhere near to the first two.

No company has successfully married the getting ON with the ENJOY factor. Personally, the bottom three are more important to me, but I’m certainly not everyone.

I walk to work/train to work, though the N95 comes a very close second, I have to say the the iPhone has it beat as a music player for me.

Just a couple of points — I don’t have to charge my iPhone headphones – the earbud inline pause/skip button is almost perfect – switching between podcasts, audible audio books, music and music videos takes quite literally 2 seconds. But perhaps the biggest reason why the iPhone is such a good music player… I can write emails, browse the net, reply to text messages, all with incredible ease and my music remains completely uninterrupted.

Add to this list your point about getting music onto the iPhone, which I believe is a massive boon, and I (personally) think the iPhone beats off all competition.

Also, the iPhone speakers aren’t dual-mono, it simply has one mono speaker, the other set of holes is for the microphone

I agree about the recessed headphone jack, that’s just a case of aesthetics over function and inexcusable!