[VLM]

No one else mentioned my $500 phone has trash speakers compared to my $90 (or whatever I paid for it on sale) echo? I wouldn't want my phone to be as big and heavy as the echo, but I certainly enjoy listening to it.

Also binary thinking, people in the ankle bracelet tribe literally cannot comprehend people who don't carry their phone with them everywhere 24x7 and vice versa, and echo is incredibly useful to members of the non-ankle bracelet tribe.

(ankle bracelet as in giant house arrest GPS tracker thingie, not shiny gold high fashion)

I have another interesting problem in that I have a newer phone that uses huge amounts of power to do the simplest things, and aftermarket wireless Qi charger, and Qi only provides USB1.0 slow charging rates of power, so even with my phone laying on the charger (s, I have multiple chargers) the battery slowly dies if I play music or podcasts or anything, whereas the echo is ac powered and I don't feel like I threw out $1 into the battery replacement fund every time I charge it because the echo is always plugged in. It feels cheaper to use the echo, less hassle. I can afford to replace my phone battery but its a huge inconvenient PITA.