> I wouldn't have thought there's any relationship at all between quality
> and power consumption. Not for a DAC, anyway.

In general more power means you have more possibilities to do stuff to 
increase the quality.  If you've designed what you think is a great DAC, 
and someone tells you to reduce the power by 25%, chances are the 
quality will suffer as a result.  All sorts of things used to increase 
quality (eg digital filters, analogue filters, voltage regulators) draw 
power, and usually can be removed/replaced to reduce the power.

 > Either way it's a pretty
> low-power device.

Only if it's designed that way, according to Wikipedia a typical DAC for 
PC soundcards is the CS4382, which draws almost half a Watt during 
normal operation - not really suitable for a portable device!  Believe 
me, the phone makers will be pushing very hard to get the power for all 
components as low as possible, every little helps!

 > Presumably the transmitter and backlight use vastly
> more power...

Backlights usually use around 100 - 200 mW depending on the screen size, 
but I don't think they usually stay on (at least not at full power) 
whilst music is playing, do they?  The transmitter should be on almost 
zero power whilst playing music, and judging by the talk times and 
battery capacities, looks around half a Watt whilst in a call.

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