Bad Move Creative?

The social scourge that is “kids who think they know music so play it on their phones on buses and tubes” is set to take a step towards pervasiveness as Creative have announced an MP3 player with a built in speaker.

The lightweight Zen Stone and Zen Stone Plus MP3 players will both come with built in speakers just so that we can all listen to some nameless disposable dance track that the kids will have forgotten come September while we’re struggling over the Metro crossword.

While the Plus version is otherwise a superb device, juggling the standard MP3 digital media player, FM radio, clock/stopwatch, and very useful built-in microphone for voice recording, does it really need a speaker to add to the mix?

Surely supporting WAV, WMA, Audible, MP3, ADPCM, and protected WMA (DRM 9) file formats is enough? It’s a decent player – does it need saddling with a potentially unpopular speaker?

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