Yesterday this post by adamzea on Twitter got me thinking because most of the time I’m one of those silly people that carry a Smartphone and an MP3 player (specifically, a  Zune).  I used to wonder the same thing as Adam, but that changed last Fall when I was gifted with a Zune.  So the question then is, “Why carry both?”

My answer to Adam’s question is “I know my Smartphone can play music too, but I carry a Smartphone AND a Zune for the following reasons (in order of priority)”:

1.  Battery Life:  The battery life on the Zune is phenomenal compared to the battery life of my Smartphone.  If I’m going to be on the move during the day, I like to reserve the battery life of my Smartphone to primary functions (phone calls, checking email, light surfing, GPS navigation, maybe picture taking).  The Zune only needs to be charged every couple of days, but even if I wind up depleting the Zune during the day, I can manage a day without music.

2.  Syncing tunes to the Zune is probably 3 or 4 times faster than syncing tunes through ActiveSync to the Smartphone, so the Zune is usually ready to go most of the time and the Smartphone is not.  I don’t listen to DRM encrypted tunes, so I know I could use a USB card reader and just copy tunes directly to the memory card I use with my Smartphone, but the SD slot on the Smartphone I’ve been carrying lately is inside the casing.  So I have to remove the casing first to get to the SD card (call me lazy if you like).

3.  Media Management: The Zune handles podcasts and books much better than the mobile version of Windows Media Player.  If I turn off a podcast or book before finishing it, the Zune remembers my place, but Windows Media Player does not.  There is third party media software, like Pocket Player,  that provides the functionality that WMP lacks (like bookmarks), but lately, I’ve been trading out devices frequently, so I’m taking a more moderate approach to installing software to my winmo device and prefer to use the existing software.

So those are my reasons for carrying both a Smartphone and an MP3 player.  If you carry both, what are your reasons?