Gadgetory

20-17 is coming to a close and it was another solid year for smartphones surveying the editorial staff at pocket now we're ready to start detailing our favorite phones of the year top features best performance we're going to kick things off with audio these are our favorite multimedia performers of the year this year Alcatel zidle returned to a more modest price bracket but happily did not sacrifice one of our favorite features this design punches well above the price tag and it's the best look we've seen for including true front-facing stereo speakers speakers which handily compete against more expensive options great audio hardware rarely seen at this tier of the smartphone market HTC had another rocky year for sales and we'd be lying if we said we weren't concerned with the U series proprietary headphone adapter but this company still impresses when it comes to playing back your tunes with dual speakers filling out your music videos and games HTC also showed off one of the coolest tech tricks of the year nearly instantaneous ear scanning to custom tailor the phone's playback to your ears it's a woefully underrated feature we think music fans will really appreciate Samsung is the number one phone manufacturer in the world which was why last year's phones were disappointing to many listeners the galaxy s7 limping in with a muffled speaker and mediocre headphone performance the Galaxy s8 was a welcome about-face still delivering a mono speaker but of noticeably higher quality sammy also benefited from a radically improved headphone DAC built into Qualcomm's chipsets this year catapulting the galaxies from near the bottom of the pile to near the top of the pack in one year a NASA doesn't hurt that Samsung customers received some excellent earbuds in the box with their purchase Google was also a close runner-up for Most Improved the pixel to arriving with better speakers than its predecessor it's the dongle which actually makes this phone interesting though visit after is a proper you SB audio device recognized by phones and computers and the DAC built into this floppy little cable noticeably outperforms the jack built into the first pixel this dongle sets us on the right path for us BC to take over as a true consumer cabled audio standard while simply being more convenient than Apple's lightning adapter this $10 cable might even be an upgrade for your laptop and that brings us to the big kahuna the LGV 30 while the mono speaker is generally fine you'll get the real ear candy when you plug in some headphones higher quality and cleaner playback than any other phone this year and when you use some nicer headphones you'll be treated to an absolutely incredible amp it's the only phone released in 2017 to deliver truly audiophile hardware capable of hanging with high-quality dedicated media players many competing phones improved this year but the v30 remains in a league of its own and that's our list for smartphone audio did your phone make the cut do you think we missed anyone drop us a comment down below as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for the rest of our year-end best of lists next up we'll be chatting smartphone cameras and then all the editors will weigh in on the top overall phones of 2017 you won't want to miss it for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos bag now some gadget guy on Twitter and Instagram and I will catch you all on the next video