Seems to be a lot of hype behind this phone, and even though I can understand why I didn't get blown away while testing this one. Sure its a really nice phone, one of the best but the battle of high-end phones is really more about nitpicking and personal preference than anything else these days. The overall quality of high-end phones have reach such high levels that you will have a really hard time telling them apart on performance alone. The speed of the SoC's (GPU+CPU) have reach such high levels that people can hardly tell the ones that rank number 1-3 apart from the ones that ranks 5-10. Same goes for other areas like camera quality, take DXOMark's list of the best cameras for instance. Things have come a long way this year and even the phones ranking as low as 10-12 on their list get some really great scores. It's all about nitpicking and personal preference at this point.
I for one never really consider anything other than Nexus devices, but that's purely because I hate the severe lack of software support all the various OEM's have on their Android phones. But that's my personal preference and even though LG is far from the worst when it comes to software support I do find the delay infurerating non the less. And I do hate that so few OEM's are respecting Google's Material Arts UX-design and incorporate something that is by far uglier in almost every possible way.
But then again, Nexus devices never feature top of the line camera modules, camera software or anything special in terms of DAC / amplifier.
To me the audio quality of the LG V10 isn't that impressive all things considered. Sure it's really good for a smartphone, especially a Android smartphone as all those phones who relay directly on Qualcomm isn't all that great. But this phone is not replacing my external-DAC and amplifier setup at home, not by a long shot. So then I have to ask, what is the point?
When using my Westone UM3X and Westone 4R which is what I use when I want great audio quality while "on-the-go" the LG V10 do not sound any better compared to phones like the Samsung Galaxy S6 / S6 Edge / S6 Edge+ or the iPhone 6 / 6S / 6 Plus / 6S Plus. And using my portable headphones (B&O BeoPlay H7) they sound exactly the same as the DAC and amplifier is ran within the headphones themselves.
I won't be logging my Sennheiser HD 650 and HD 700 around, and while being at home I would never use the LG V10 to drive them any way.
At least to me, this sounds like something some people would be bragging about but barley use in their ever day lives.
But that does not mean that the phone is overall great and surely is a tempting and very good phone for many users out there.
