[esrauch]

I don't really understand what the downsides are, given the choices are "phone" or "phone + music player". Is "music player only" actually a feasible option for anyony (besides the case of runners, where you are temporarily without your phone)?

Like how is "the music player battery lasts for 5 days, and phone battery lasts 1.5 days" a pro-music-player argument: it means the options are "charge every day" and "charge every day, and additionally a second thing every 5 days", right?

[detaro]

Phone is heavier and bulkier, so I prefer to leave it at my desk when I'm not moving between places, and I might not always want to carry it if I'm just quickly going somewhere. In comparison a small MP3 player will clip somewhere (which also would make cabling more comfortable when I'm carrying the phone).

My phones never last 1.5 days of use if they have to play music all the time as well, at least not once the battery is a year old. With my current one, having to balance usage to make sure it'll be available when I need it is getting annoying and includes "no music now".

At least in the past storage in phones was needlessly expensive and scarce, this has gotten better, and you can still get enough phones with microSD slots, despite the best attempts of some manufacturers to get rid of them.

Bluetooth also has gotten more reliable, that helps, but at least among the devices I've tried that's really a recent development, and still not perfect.

I totally get that other people will evaluate this differently (and/or buy better phones than me), but I don't see it as an obvious answer.

[coldtea]

>Phone is heavier and bulkier

A modern phone compared to a Zune?

[detaro]

The parent of this subthread, whose "I don't see the need to use a phone for music" you questioned wasn't talking about a Zune.

> I use a USB stick music player. It's essentially like a usb drive with a headphone jack.

This specific point clearly doesn't apply to a Zune, so we can assume remaining Zune users have other individual reasons why they like what they have.

[zeotroph]

Tactile buttons. A touchscreen is impossible to operate without looking at it. I assume most of us MP3-stick users have listening habits which requires us to change the track or volume every few minutes, if not more often.