Gadgetory

how's it goin everyone I'm Adam Alina so you read the title of the video so you know are we here what makes a phone great at audio not good great what makes it the best and no we're not talking about blind listening test or YouTube recording comparisons you can actually prove which phones are best at audio sure there's some level of subjectivity to how we perceive sound as humans but audio is physics not magic there's some key objective things that we can point to and say okay this phone is better than this phone but what are they let's find out so let's start with the obvious smart phone speakers suck like really bad so what determines the best phone for audio isn't gonna be how well it blasts music when you're listening to it on the subway it's easy for us to say that they're bad but it's important to remember that they don't suck because they're poorly made they suck because of physics it's just hard to get something so small to sound good with such little power think of the smallest decent sounding speaker you've ever heard and now imagine trying to squeeze that into something the size of a smart phone several companies like Dirac are trying to make the most of a bad situation by implementing some psycho acoustic trickery to make bass sound better but the problem remains that smartphone speakers simply aren't capable of doing a good job currently to be frank speakers are also kind of hard to test for it because the way that something sounds in perfect ideal lab conditions doesn't really translate to the real world as I'm sure your bedroom like mine isn't an anechoic chamber other sounds from the outside world will drown out or mask notes of similar frequencies meaning that you won't be able to hear everything coming out of the speakers if your speakers can't overpower outside noise then you can't hear it let's look at the LGV 35 for example at an average sound pressure level of 72 decibels at max volume it has some significant issues with sound quality because many of the most important notes are 1/2 to 1/4 as loud because of this it's far harder to hear them when there's any sort of noise around you let's look at some examples here focus on the music not the noise doesn't really sound good does it weak speakers that can't overpower outside noise just fall flat even the best smartphone struggle here so if the speakers aren't much to write home about how does a phone stand out from the crowd how does it set itself apart well one way that phones do that is with the features they offer for example if you really want the best smartphone for audio then you need a headphone jack most people like boosted bass and a lot of consumer headphones give you just that it's not coming from the phone it's your headphones if your music sounds bad the bottleneck is your headphones 99 times out of 100 that's also why so many people are adamant about keeping the headphone jack there's a lot of really good headphones out there that use a 3.5 millimeter plug and they're often a lot cheaper than two Bluetooth cans if you're gonna limit what your phone can connect with you need good options to use the connection standards that you have and at the moment there's far more really great headphones and in ears with wires than there are with Bluetooth or USB C headphones maybe that'll change in a future but for right now the best audio experience comes from a 3.5 millimeter connection even USBC headphones which should have offered a better experience than the hundred euro trrs tech don't really have any high quality or even good options trust us just Google USB C headphones USB C headphones also seem to be slowing down on releases as well just because no-one's really buying them people are finding compatibility issues even within the same brands the oneplus USBC earbuds for example work perfectly fine with the 60 but not with the older 5 T that's not great where the headphone jack works on just about everything USB C just doesn't and that's even true of the dongles there's not a single dongle that works on every smartphone and that's a problem now if you plan on using bluetooth headphones then the next thing you should be aware of are the Bluetooth codecs luckily most newer Android phones have many of them baked into the OS like aptX apdex HD AAC and sony's l dec unfortunately they don't all work as they're supposed to especially AAC which just isn't up to snuff on Android devices though to be fair it does work fine on iOS devices and each connection will add very amounts of noise that usually isn't very audible however Bluetooth can sometimes mean intermittent disconnects no music when the battery runs out and limited bandwidth issues lastly there's the extra audio stuff that isn't really a huge deal but just nice to have an example of a random audio perk you might want to consider is something like Dolby Atmos support which might be important if you plan on watching a lot of video on your phone if you want to take it a step further then you might also want the better built-in deck or internal amplifier in order to adequately power some higher impedance headphones ok so after all that let's prove ourselves a bit we can tell just exactly how good or bad each phone can read a music file process it and output a signal by measuring it ideally the phone wouldn't change anything at all from the original recording making this note higher than that note adding Distortion you get the idea in general we're looking for any errors that you could possibly hear like low dynamic range high noise or frequency response deviations over 2 decibels so we use a pretty simple setup to test the phone's physical output port whether that's a 3.5 millimeter audio jack or a USB C port and dongle while there's lots of little variations sometimes usually it's so minor that you'd never know it was there bluetooth on the other hand does sometimes have audible errors but we encourage you to check out our huge article linked below on the subject basically Bluetooth connections aren't as stable as a wire and sometimes that can mean audible issues last year we found that some codecs will present some noise where it shouldn't even exist even in ideal conditions where lots of other devices aren't interfering with your signal see all of that noise above the dotted red line yeah not good this isn't a problem on wired if you're on Android you'll probably want to stick to aptX HD or L deck at 660 kbps neither of which technically provides as good quality as a wired connection but you'd never know unless you have absolutely perfect youthful ears if audio is important to you then the best smartphone for audio is basically one any phone with a headphone jack - any phone that can power your wired headphones if you have any and three a phone with speakers that can get loud even if they suck the technical differences between phones are to minut to make any real-world differences so as long as the phone you pick has those three pillars then you're golden and that pretty much does it thanks for watching and make sure to hit up the description for links to all of our deep dives on the subject make sure to subscribe if you haven't already and also follow us on to socials for any and all Android related news and reviews because we are your source for all things Android