One should be at the bottom one at the top. I understand space on the phone is a premium but a second port would make the phone so much more usable. Wired headphones, flash drives, camera modules, speaker modules, keyboards, even connection to a TV, all could be used while charging. It’s a shame it’s not a thing, USB is extremely versatile port, but you only get one and it’s used for charging half of the time. (I am aware dongles exist)
What do you use for a dedicated mp3 player? These days all I see are dying (flash chips) used SanDisk Sansa players, cheap Amazon ones, and super audiophile level $400 ones…
Just a cheap SanDisk one. For me the main advantage is reliability; I sleep with headphones for white noise, and even discounting the possibility of the battery dying because you can’t play audio and charge at the same time, it is still basically impossible to set a smartphone up to be totally sure it will continue playing an audio file for 8 hours with no interruptions. Works great for playing music too though.