Midrange phone for music and photos

Ysmalari · 1 Feb 2021 at 16:54

I've been trawling reviews opinions and anything else I could find regarding phones that have decent audio for headphones.

I'm using Bose QC ii headphones, mainly in Bluetooth mode but occasionally in wired mode, on my admittedly crappy Honor 10 and I'm fed up with the sound quality. I've got the paid version of Poweramp and have tweaked the EQ as much as possible but frankly it still sounds very treble heavy with little impact.

Additionally the camera on the Honor 10 is pretty awful and it'd be nice to have a better option.
So after a 2.5 years I think it's time for an upgrade.

I prefer to buy outright rather than contract so budget wise I'm firmly in the midrange - between £300 to £500 - and I'm definitely in the android camp. Reviews rarely mention headphone audio quality so I'm hoping someone here might have some advice?

MrRockliffe · 1 Feb 2021 at 16:57

So does it need to have a headphone jack?

Ysmalari · 1 Feb 2021 at 16:58

It wouldn't be a deal breaker if it didn't, just a nice to have.

Columbo · 2 Feb 2021 at 08:33

I bought the wife a Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite 5g for £250 and honestly I'm blown away by what you get for the money, she loves it and uses it for music daily.

Good mid range chipset, nice build quality, headphone jack, 128gb, 120hz screen, decent camera's and a big battery so for the cash there's not a lot to complain about and in daily use I can hardly tell the difference between it and my Note 20 Ultra which cost £1k....

Ysmalari · 2 Feb 2021 at 09:20

Interesting choice, I hadn't really looked into the Xiaomi phones so I'll do some reading on it.

Thanks

Ysmalari · 2 Feb 2021 at 12:33

I think I've narrowed down my options on this partly because I'd also like a phone that's less than 160mm tall and this somewhat limits the choices apparently

From even more research I think my options are:
Pixel 4a
Pixel 4a 5g - is the extra cost of the 5g worth it?
Samsung s10e
Oneplus Nord - just about in the size limit but no headphone socket and mixed views on sound quality.

Any opinions on these?

The Xiaomi and Realme options are intriguing but they're all quite large.

FishLicker · 2 Feb 2021 at 20:33

Galaxy S10 / S10+ must be a strong option, get a refurb or excellent second hand one for around that surely.

+ headphone jack
+ SD card slot
+ 3 lens camera setup

Also look into a refurb or second hand LG phone with Quad DAC.

DataVampire · 3 Feb 2021 at 03:24

As far as I'm aware for music playback you cannot get better than a lg phone. but in all seriousness. just get whatever phone you like for other features than music and then just buy a mobile dac plenty of them and go from cheapish to silly amounts, most new dacs have either usbc or MicroUSB to plug into the phone, and they also then give you a headphone jack. Fiio do some good starter dacs which from what i have seen and read are better than the lg phones.

Ysmalari · 3 Feb 2021 at 12:16

DataVampire said:
As far as I'm aware for music playback you cannot get better than a lg phone. but in all seriousness. just get whatever phone you like for other features than music and then just buy a mobile dac plenty of them and go from cheapish to silly amounts, most new dacs have either usbc or MicroUSB to plug into the phone, and they also then give you a headphone jack. Fiio do some good starter dacs which from what i have seen and read are better than the lg phones.

Thanks very much that's very useful info.
If I'm not happy with the audio output of the new phone then a USB C DAC may be the answer.

I had been checking for LG options but they seem like gold dust in the UK with only a few decent options on ebay; I'm always wary of buying high value items from there.

By chance I spotted a Pixel 4a 5g on Amazon warehouse for £100 less than normal, the condition is supposed to be perfect apart from some packaging damage. Worth the punt I thought as I can just return it immediately if there's a problem.

CF93 · 10 Feb 2021 at 20:42

Get a USB DAC, then the phone model is less relevant. I use a Cyrus Soundkey, relatively inexpensive, and it's better than the built in "HD audio" DAC on my Galaxy S10 (though it's the Exynos version, apparently the Snapdragon has better audio.)

Also try the Wavelet app, basically it's predefined equaliser profiles based on headphone model, and at least in my experience does improve the sound, with and without the Soundkey. The combination of the two is a huge improvement over just plugging headphones straight in to the phone. I keep the equaliser in poweramp switched off completely to avoid double-eq'ing.