The main reason for me is consistency. I listen to white noise for sleeping, and when I used a phone for that it would often get interrupted by stuff like the phone randomly restarting for whatever reason phones sometimes do that, or there was a software update that changed something so the volume button on the earbuds activated voice assistant which made a noise that wasn’t disabled by do-not-disturb mode, or all the other various quirks and exceptions to how do-not-disturb mode works, or the UI or functionality of whatever audio app I was using suddenly being different in a way I didn’t like because apps can just update themselves like that. Transferring files to a phone over usb can be a little involved and sometimes bug out. Then there’s that it shares a battery with the phone, which may have gotten low for other reasons, and the trend with phones of not having a headphone jack or sd card slot.
An mp3 player only does one thing, has no network connectivity, does not update its software, and is designed around non-wireless file transfer. that makes it better than a phone for audio from my perspective. You can turn off the phone and use the mp3 player and all of your phone’s bullshit goes away.
The main reason for me is consistency. I listen to white noise for sleeping, and when I used a phone for that it would often get interrupted by stuff like the phone randomly restarting for whatever reason phones sometimes do that, or there was a software update that changed something so the volume button on the earbuds activated voice assistant which made a noise that wasn’t disabled by do-not-disturb mode, or all the other various quirks and exceptions to how do-not-disturb mode works, or the UI or functionality of whatever audio app I was using suddenly being different in a way I didn’t like because apps can just update themselves like that. Transferring files to a phone over usb can be a little involved and sometimes bug out. Then there’s that it shares a battery with the phone, which may have gotten low for other reasons, and the trend with phones of not having a headphone jack or sd card slot.
An mp3 player only does one thing, has no network connectivity, does not update its software, and is designed around non-wireless file transfer. that makes it better than a phone for audio from my perspective. You can turn off the phone and use the mp3 player and all of your phone’s bullshit goes away.