[Windows Phone 7 General] N8ter:
Yes, I would. Why not? Not everyone wants to have a BT headset wrapped around their ears, or or earbuds stuffed in their ears all the time (can lead to ear infections if you have a reaction to the materials or general ear soreness).

The Vibrant's speakers can almost fill a room. Why should I settle for HD7 speakers that are 1/3rd as powerful with factorably worse sound quality. HTC needs to do something to bump up the volume.

Also, the Volume is so low that it makes the phone useless as an alarm, and you can miss phone rinks and notifications in environments with noise. Also, the sound quality isn't that great. I have almost perfect pitch (classically trained) and it's impossible to listen to bravura music with these speakers - with or without headset. I'm talking about things like Baroque Coloratura Arias and Vivaldi Music, especially played at Allegro or faster tempos. The pitches are off in many cases. Yes, most normal people (or people who listen to other genres or music for which they've probably never seen a score) won't notice, but I do. When the hardware basically tries to transpose the music up or down for me, something's wrong. When I can't discern a trill from a tremolo, something is equally wrong :P

When I say the speakers are low, I don't mean a tiny bit lower than other phones... I mean it's a LOT lower than other phones.

A lot of those reviews are conducted in environments with little to no sound (almost all of them). In real world use, it's terrible. The HD2 was just as bad. I'm almost leading to hardware, but since I'm not well versed in the underpinnings of WP7 I cannot rule out driver issues, either (give it's based on CE and the HD2/HD7 are basically the same phones).

The low speakers also affect the speaker phone, as well as the phone's earpiece emitting a low volume on the highest settings. I should not feel the need to put a phone to my ear to listen to music coming out of it, or should I?

The only reason why earpieces work well is because they are in your freaking ear - anything will sound louder in that situation. Of course the sound is better for those, but I prefer not to use those as I tend to have inner ear reactions to the materials (they give me inflamation) and I don't like BT headsets because they make my ear sore from sitting there so much. It also doesn't solve the pitch and "transposition" issues.

Yes, it's only a smartphone, but I have old closeted machines with "Made for Windows NT 4 Workstation" stickers on them with integrated graphics cards that produce better sound.

I have basically stopped making phone calls on my HD7 because the speakers are so low that the sound is unintelligible at times...

Now, let's do a quick search and see what we come up with:

1. HD7 : Volume Speaker TERRIBLE -- http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=925885

2. HD7 Low Volume Issue -- http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=2014501#post2014501

3. Engadget HD7 Review -- http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/20/htc-hd7-review/

4. PocketNow HD7 Review -- http://pocketnow.com/windows-phone/t-mobile-htc-hd7-review

5. HTC Ring Volume (and System Volume) @ HTC Forums -- http://community.htc.com/na/htc-forums/windows-phone/f/102/t/8012.aspx

Point? Bottom line is simple. It doesn't matter whether you think I should be listening to media through the external speaker or not. The sound is poor compared to most other smartphones on the market and I'm not the only person who thinks so. Almost all reviews have ranked the sound as being poor. Furthermore, not all apps support BT for their audio, so that's only a half solution. Again, I'm not going to destroy my ears with earbuds. Everyone phone I've used outside of the HD7/HD2 has had great sound compared to this... They need to do something to bump up the volume...