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Annoying hardware: a rogues' gallery

Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 06 Jun 2008 17:35 BST

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Mobile phone headphone sockets
Your phone has an FM radio. It plays MP3s. Mobile operators desperately want to flog you overpriced content. Why, then, do so few mobiles have normal 3.5mm headphone sockets? Stuck with hideous hands-free kit that lasts a month before being lost or broken, forced to shell out for a flimsy adapter or obscenely overpriced optional headsets, punters in their millions pick up their iPods and run away. Headphone sockets are the one of the few standards that really work: ignoring them is self-defeating stupidity of the highest order. That's the mobile phone business.