In general I accept this point of view. But I do think that when the phone fails to work well as a phone and the manufacturer just ignores this element it's a bit ridiculous. I do think the "phone" function of a phone is kind of fundamental.
And in the case of a cell phone, obviously people are going to use it out and about in the world, not just at home where it's quiet. So it ought to perform decently. Nokia just blows in this respect. I really thought after three years they might have gotten somewhere.
People should check out this site:
http://www.arcx.com/sites/
It's the only place that I've found that consistently and seriously reviews the actual call quality of phones, particularly that bothers to review the outgoing call quality in noisy settings question. This reviewer over the years has clearly shown that, although Nokia phones have very good call quality in quiet settings, they have always been at the bottom of the barrel for noise canceling in noisy settings. Nokia is very consistently the worst.
I think in flagship N series phones Nokia should get its act together, when other people are doing better in plain everyday phones. Maybe not everyone cares about noise cancellation in noisy settings, but it's not going to hurt anyone to put this in. I mean, why on earth has Nokia put this only in the 6720 Classic and the E72, but not in a single N series phone?
I think there are no excuses for Nokia having done this so badly for so long.