>> Riiight. So I can pay £40 or more for the headphones with the special
>> phone-specific plug and listen to low-quality MP3 playback.
>
> Most phones aimed at mp3 playback have either a standard 3.5mm jack or a
> cheap converter is available to 3.5mm (or even included in the box).

Well, my particular phone appears to have only a DC connector and a wide 
multi-pin array. No standard audio socket. (And why would they? If they 
put in a non-standard connector, they can charge you £40 for an adaptor. 
Note that £40 is more money than the actual phone itself, BTW.)

> The
> sound quality from a phone is in general no different from an mp3
> player, they are probably using identical circuits inside. After all, a
> DAC that works up to 20 kHz is a walk in the park compared to all the
> rest of the electronics in the phone.

Making a DAC what "works" is probably quite trivial. Making one that can 
isolate all the signal noise from the rest of the phone, handle sudden 
transients while being powered only by a feeble half-flat battery, and 
so on and so forth is probably much harder.

Then again, it's MP3, so it probably won't sound fantastic anyway. 
Certainly most people are going to plug in those horrid £2 things from 
the market, so the quality of the electronic signal is quite irrelevant.

>> Or I could, I don't know, use my MP3 player...
>
> If you don't mind carrying around, charging and syncing an additional
> device, sure.

In truth, my entire music collection is encoded as Ogg Vorbis, which my 
phone won't support anyway. ;-)

Far more problematic than carrying the player is carrying the large £30 
headphones I usually use it with.

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