Dustin Curtis:

On the other hand, I’ve always been slightly irritated by the iPhone’s speaker. I felt that putting it at the bottom of the phone was awkward, because it’s not pointing toward me when I put the phone flat on the table. But, as it turns out, it was put there for a reason: no matter how you put an iPhone down on a surface, it’s almost impossible to cover the speaker.

Yet another one of those design decisions that you don’t really appreciate until you see someone doing it wrong.

Never thought about this, but glad Apple did.

I still wish the speaker was louder though – my old Motorola flip phone was almost twice as loud. Perhaps they’ll make improvements in the next major hardware revision.