[there]

Even when you place the Nexus S on a flat surface, its speaker becomes almost inaudible.

i just put my nexus s on my desk and the speaker worked just fine. the whole reason why there's a little bump over the center of the speaker is to raise it off of a flat surface and let the audio get out.

putting the iphone in a dock probably muffles the audio coming from its bottom speaker (though maybe apple's dock accounts for this, maybe 3rd party ones don't).

there's probably not a perfect way to solve this for every user. if you know the speaker is on the back, don't rest it on a blanket. if it's on the bottom, don't use it in a dock.

[adolph]

Yep, Apple's docks have little cut-outs. Some 3rd party inserts for various cases have cut-outs too.