However, I felt the quality of the product (the hard case) was nicer than the cheap one a friend of mine bought

Quality and Sound are good.

Another note is that conversion into a file format that Amazon accepts also degraded the quality slightly

The quality isn't great, but it is really handy when you don't have a dedicated camera on hand

To me, that is what apple will continue improving--i can see each model getting better and better video quality as well as eventually adding still photos

The FM radio is of good quality