[Maglebrius]

Of the 3 devices you are thinking about getting only one has a dedicated Hi-fi DAC and that's the Axon, I heard there's a lot of problems with the EU version but on the US so far has been great with only a few software quirks, I would say the sound is pretty good but needs some tuning to sound it's best and it gets loud but I think it needs more volume steps for sure, Pocketnow has a series called "real audio review" on YouTube and they recently did the 3T I believe you could benefit from watching it but all in all good showing by the 3T , that mi5s plus is beast on specs though and can't be that terrible with audio especially if you use 32ohm or less just wait for GSMArena audio review to get a reference or you could still buy an external DAC one day, I think Axon is great overall the Axon 7 mini sounds better but smaller screen. BTW LG has a v20 Pro or v34 I think...Look into that one I remember watching a video on it I think it will be less expensive and be available in the EU?

EDIT: v20 Pro has a smaller screen

thanks for the reply!
 
neither the devices you mentioned from LG are officially released in EU
 
on the other hand i have found a mi5s plus review about audio here : http://www.devicespecifications.com/it/editor-review/a4c828 but i quite can't understand how much it achieves in audio quality , especially compared with dac equipped smartphones, tough it doesn't look that bad 
 
i also don't get it.... how is the axon 7 mini sounds better than axon 7? aren't they equipped with the similar audio chips?

 

[Jimster480]

let's stop that HTC 10 bashing. 2 pages already, we got it, everyone shall try it. but don't anyone dare here to say the best right now or similar. too many good smartphone's audio out there, depends on taste.
I like HTC boomy sound, but definitely not neutral (which would be best?)

I personally am very keen to read more about the xplay 6...
and hope that V20s comes out for real :/

You realize it has audio profiles right? You can literally tune it however you want.

 

[Jimster480]

wow, some biased opinion here, once again.

i've been using xiaomi and meizu for more than 3 years, along with my girlfriend and some friends, too. no hardware faults, stable softwares (especially with xiaomis), no issues whatsoever. if you really want to criticize some chinese brands, check out their camera performances. other than that, these are just phones, just like with any a-brand. no wonder sony, htc, or even samsung feel the heat.

audio wise, the meizu pro 6 plus has to be one of the best phones out there, and it's a solid device in every way. global availability might be a bit tricky, though.

Just because it lasted for you doesn't mean it lasts for everyone. I have a number of friends with chinese phones and they are mostly crap. As I myself also owned a number of chinese tablets and PMP's, etc they have historically had troubles withe quality and software, as anything from China tends to have (although homegrown products often have the worst quality).

 

[lantian]

  thanks for the reply!
 
neither the devices you mentioned from LG are officially released in EU
 
on the other hand i have found a mi5s plus review about audio here : http://www.devicespecifications.com/it/editor-review/a4c828 but i quite can't understand how much it achieves in audio quality , especially compared with dac equipped smartphones, tough it doesn't look that bad 
 
i also don't get it.... how is the axon 7 mini sounds better than axon 7? aren't they equipped with the similar audio chips?

The axon 7 has two akm chips ak4490(which doesn't run anywhere near its full potential on that phone, that chip should sound a lot better with proper implementation) and ak4961, while the axon 7 mini has the newer ak4962 chip in it

 

[RicardoB]

thanks for the reply!

neither the devices you mentioned from LG are officially released in EU

on the other hand i have found a mi5s plus review about audio here : http://www.devicespecifications.com/it/editor-review/a4c828 but i quite can't understand how much it achieves in audio quality , especially compared with dac equipped smartphones, tough it doesn't look that bad 

i also don't get it.... how is the axon 7 mini sounds better than axon 7? aren't they equipped with the similar audio chips?

"The Axon 7’s audio reproduction is markedly improved, believe it or not, over the Axon 7’s — an unintended benefit of a new sound chip, the AKM 4962, which consolidates the the Axon 7’s two separate audio processors (a AKM 4961 DAC and AKM 4490 ADC) into one. Incredibly, ZTE said the Axon 7 Mini is louder than its predecessor — a claim we can back up after cranking up its volume during a loud demo video. And the level of detail is impressive, besides: the bass is deep but not boomy, the highs are clean and crisp, and voices come through loud and clear. It’s a stellar listening experience across the board" it was easier to copy and paste lol also to my ears it was smoother and brought details forward more than the regular Axon which is very capable IMO.... they have been trying to get it right let's see what ZTE does without nougat

 

[Jimster480]

I know you love your htc 10 but have you compared it with other smartphones like v10 in terms of audio quality ?

Yes and many other places have too.... this is why this entire thread makes no sense. The figures are literally out there all over the place, even on this damn forum. The HTC 10 literally kicks everythings ass in basically every single benchmark.
There is a reason that many audio sites and Android review sites said that the phone sets the new standard.
Its like you guys are just obvlivious to all the information available to you and continue to talk about shoddy LG products as if there is an actual comparison.
Even if the V20 manages to beat the HTC 10 in audio "quality" (which at the point of the HTC 10 honestly you cannot tell the difference unless you are wearing $1000+ headphones) LG software will continue to be vastly inferior most likely for the years to come. I know LG has been trying to turn this around but overall every generation of their phones has had horrible battery life coupled with poorly done software and slow updates.
Facts don't lie, it just seems that you guys refuse to see them and it seems others just want to fanboy LG.
 
I have no brand loyalties to any company at all, infact HTC themselves got mad at me while I was doing testing because I pointed out every fault of every device and criticized them on the pricepoints when I thought they were not competitive. Whatever is good I will promote it, but I have tried LG phones and have a number of friends who own LG phones and they are all terrible phones at the end of the day. When you have top audiophiles coming out all around the web talking about how great the HTC 10 audio quality is and how great the phone is overall.... I'm not sure where there is room to dispute that? Professional testing showing how it beats all its competitors... and yet you guys still sit around second guessing over and over again?

It seems that everyone is hung up on "DAC chip" as if that is 100% of an audio solution and you think that because one phone has some Chip that it makes it better.... This reminds me of the chinese PMP days with all their little PMP's coming with "Wolfson" chips and then sounding like muddy trash. Some of the best standalone audio products have "worse" DAC's than these phones and still sound better. I think that the S7/G5/HTC 10/Axon 7 audio comparison (you can find them all over the internet, especially S7/M10 and G5/M10) shows that the "dac chip" makes little difference as many of you guys are arguing that "all 820 devices have aqstic" yet the audio quality from a S7/G5 is atrocious in comparison to the HTC 10 and the Axon 7 while its closer gets demolished aswell. And then the "scientific" testing from the G5 + B/O Module still losing to the HTC 10 headphone out..... but no lets not look at facts. Lets just keep a guessing game going on forever based on "dac chips".

 

[Maglebrius]

T

"The Axon 7’s audio reproduction is markedly improved, believe it or not, over the Axon 7’s — an unintended benefit of a new sound chip, the AKM 4962, which consolidates the the Axon 7’s two separate audio processors (a AKM 4961 DAC and AKM 4490 ADC) into one. Incredibly, ZTE said the Axon 7 Mini is louder than its predecessor — a claim we can back up after cranking up its volume during a loud demo video. And the level of detail is impressive, besides: the bass is deep but not boomy, the highs are clean and crisp, and voices come through loud and clear. It’s a stellar listening experience across the board" it was easier to copy and paste lol also to my ears it was smoother and brought details forward more than the regular Axon which is very capable IMO.... they have been trying to get it right let's see what ZTE does without nougat

too bad axon mini has such an underwelming processor then, otherwise would have been perfect

 

[lisztian420]

Yes and many other places have too.... this is why this entire thread makes no sense. The figures are literally out there all over the place, even on this damn forum. The HTC 10 literally kicks everythings ass in basically every single benchmark.
There is a reason that many audio sites and Android review sites said that the phone sets the new standard.
Its like you guys are just obvlivious to all the information available to you and continue to talk about shoddy LG products as if there is an actual comparison.
Even if the V20 manages to beat the HTC 10 in audio "quality" (which at the point of the HTC 10 honestly you cannot tell the difference unless you are wearing $1000+ headphones) LG software will continue to be vastly inferior most likely for the years to come. I know LG has been trying to turn this around but overall every generation of their phones has had horrible battery life coupled with poorly done software and slow updates.
Facts don't lie, it just seems that you guys refuse to see them and it seems others just want to fanboy LG.

I have no brand loyalties to any company at all, infact HTC themselves got mad at me while I was doing testing because I pointed out every fault of every device and criticized them on the pricepoints when I thought they were not competitive. Whatever is good I will promote it, but I have tried LG phones and have a number of friends who own LG phones and they are all terrible phones at the end of the day. When you have top audiophiles coming out all around the web talking about how great the HTC 10 audio quality is and how great the phone is overall.... I'm not sure where there is room to dispute that? Professional testing showing how it beats all its competitors... and yet you guys still sit around second guessing over and over again?


It seems that everyone is hung up on "DAC chip" as if that is 100% of an audio solution and you think that because one phone has some Chip that it makes it better.... This reminds me of the chinese PMP days with all their little PMP's coming with "Wolfson" chips and then sounding like muddy trash. Some of the best standalone audio products have "worse" DAC's than these phones and still sound better. I think that the S7/G5/HTC 10/Axon 7 audio comparison (you can find them all over the internet, especially S7/M10 and G5/M10) shows that the "dac chip" makes little difference as many of you guys are arguing that "all 820 devices have aqstic" yet the audio quality from a S7/G5 is atrocious in comparison to the HTC 10 and the Axon 7 while its closer gets demolished aswell. And then the "scientific" testing from the G5 + B/O Module still losing to the HTC 10 headphone out..... but no lets not look at facts. Lets just keep a guessing game going on forever based on "dac chips".

Also the headphone out on the LG is kinda flimsy... I have problem triggering Google voice coz of it. I'm really not a big fan of their h.o...

 

[Jimster480]

Also the headphone out on the LG is kinda flimsy... I have problem triggering Google voice coz of it. I'm really not a big fan of their h.o...

My friend has the V10 and actually broke his first one and got a replacement (he does those phone leases) then he had the second one replaced after it started overheating a few months in and killing his battery in about an hour or two.

 

[Onitsuka]

Yes and many other places have too.... this is why this entire thread makes no sense. The figures are literally out there all over the place, even on this damn forum. The HTC 10 literally kicks everythings ass in basically every single benchmark.
There is a reason that many audio sites and Android review sites said that the phone sets the new standard.
Its like you guys are just obvlivious to all the information available to you and continue to talk about shoddy LG products as if there is an actual comparison.
Even if the V20 manages to beat the HTC 10 in audio "quality" (which at the point of the HTC 10 honestly you cannot tell the difference unless you are wearing $1000+ headphones) LG software will continue to be vastly inferior most likely for the years to come. I know LG has been trying to turn this around but overall every generation of their phones has had horrible battery life coupled with poorly done software and slow updates.
Facts don't lie, it just seems that you guys refuse to see them and it seems others just want to fanboy LG.

I have no brand loyalties to any company at all, infact HTC themselves got mad at me while I was doing testing because I pointed out every fault of every device and criticized them on the pricepoints when I thought they were not competitive. Whatever is good I will promote it, but I have tried LG phones and have a number of friends who own LG phones and they are all terrible phones at the end of the day. When you have top audiophiles coming out all around the web talking about how great the HTC 10 audio quality is and how great the phone is overall.... I'm not sure where there is room to dispute that? Professional testing showing how it beats all its competitors... and yet you guys still sit around second guessing over and over again?


It seems that everyone is hung up on "DAC chip" as if that is 100% of an audio solution and you think that because one phone has some Chip that it makes it better.... This reminds me of the chinese PMP days with all their little PMP's coming with "Wolfson" chips and then sounding like muddy trash. Some of the best standalone audio products have "worse" DAC's than these phones and still sound better. I think that the S7/G5/HTC 10/Axon 7 audio comparison (you can find them all over the internet, especially S7/M10 and G5/M10) shows that the "dac chip" makes little difference as many of you guys are arguing that "all 820 devices have aqstic" yet the audio quality from a S7/G5 is atrocious in comparison to the HTC 10 and the Axon 7 while its closer gets demolished aswell. And then the "scientific" testing from the G5 + B/O Module still losing to the HTC 10 headphone out..... but no lets not look at facts. Lets just keep a guessing game going on forever based on "dac chips".

Can you please elaborate more on LG software vs HTC software?

 

[Jimster480]

Can you please elaborate more on LG software vs HTC software?

HTC spends alot of time optimizing their software, HTC has Sense UI w/ Customizations, they have their boomsound & Dolby Audio w/ Profiles, their own messenger app, BlinkFeed, etc
 
The system is highly optimized as you can find out in tests of the HTC 10 vs the S7 or G5 where HTC keeps programs running in the background in RAM but "suspended" (usually atleast) which makes for a much better multi-tasking experience as switching between apps is virtually instant (similar to iOS devices) where as LG devices often have to reload the app unless its the last used app.
HTC also has an auto preloader which loads some apps into a suspended state if you often use them (similar to superfetch on windows) but it doesn't eat up all your device resources.
 
Additionally HTC has their own transfer mechanism for switching to HTC and their camera software is also quite good with things like Hi-Res audio recording for videos and a general hi-res audio driver for recording from other applications such as smart recorder or voice recorder.
 
From a pure audio perspective though the audio profiles are a great thing as they let you literally "tune" the phone to make it sound however you prefer and there are even some active earphones which you can buy (USB-C only) which can "map" your ears and optimize the sound for your personal listening.
 
LG's software varies per market as I have seen with friends overseas with some phones just coming with simple "audio boost" features and others having more complex boosting, but the overall OS layout + optimizations is far inferior which is what makes their devices slower and have less battery life due to the constant nature of opening/closing apps.
 
HTC's "boost" software is also pretty decent as it kills applications that you havent used for a few days even if you have forgotten to close them (lets you adjust when/how long) or if they started other background processes (as alot of android applications do).

 

[stenog]

I don't have the V20 so can't comment on that. It's not sold in Europe and never will be.

Regarding HTC10 and the V10. There are already several comparisons in this tread and and in the different HTC treads. Both phones are relatively old so many of these posts are way back.

Overall the H10 is a way better phone, is faster, battery life is way better, etc. Etc.

For SQ alone I could easily live with both. For my ears the H10 is slightly warmer and more bassy, the V10 more neutral and maybe slightly bigger soundstage. I will say it comes down to preferences if we only talk SQ.

As far as I understand the V20 is overall a better phone than the V10 and with better SQ, it should be the V10 is 1.5 years old. Again I have never tried/heard it so this is only what I have read/heard.

 

[Onitsuka]

HTC spends alot of time optimizing their software, HTC has Sense UI w/ Customizations, they have their boomsound & Dolby Audio w/ Profiles, their own messenger app, BlinkFeed, etc

The system is highly optimized as you can find out in tests of the HTC 10 vs the S7 or G5 where HTC keeps programs running in the background in RAM but "suspended" (usually atleast) which makes for a much better multi-tasking experience as switching between apps is virtually instant (similar to iOS devices) where as LG devices often have to reload the app unless its the last used app

HTC also has an auto preloader which loads some apps into a suspended state if you often use them (similar to superfetch on windows) but it doesn't eat up all your device resources.

Additionally HTC has their own transfer mechanism for switching to HTC and their camera software is also quite good with things like Hi-Res audio recording for videos and a general hi-res audio driver for recording from other applications such as smart recorder or voice recorder.

From a pure audio perspective though the audio profiles are a great thing as they let you literally "tune" the phone to make it sound however you prefer and there are even some active earphones which you can buy (USB-C only) which can "map" your ears and optimize the sound for your personal listening.

LG's software varies per market as I have seen with friends overseas with some phones just coming with simple "audio boost" features and others having more complex boosting, but the overall OS layout + optimizations is far inferior which is what makes their devices slower and have less battery life due to the constant nature of opening/closing apps.

HTC's "boost" software is also pretty decent as it kills applications that you havent used for a few days even if you have forgotten to close them (lets you adjust when/how long) or if they started other background processes (as alot of android applications do).

I'm not sure about the SenseUI as its purely subjective. IMO from using HTC G1 Android since day 1, and later HTC devices, Sense is laggy as any other non Google original UI. It adds too much nonsense customizations hence sluggish.

The bold part is what I want to emphasize. This isn't how Android works. Apps are ALWAYS kept in a cache memory no matter how you want to change that, HTC or LG or any other vendors cannot and they don't reload apps but Android does. If the cache reaches quota, they're paged out.

Killing apps periodically like HTC does actually do more harm than good things, since apps are kept in cache for a number of reasons: fast access, less IO, etc. Cached memory are paged anyway if expires, so you don't have to worry about that. Reloading the apps and makes it reloads everything rather than just paged in from cache memory is a bad idea from OS perspective.

If you search my posts, I'm not an LG fan either, but I don't like the way you praise HTC.

Because they have equally ****ty software.

 

[stenog]

I'm not sure about the SenseUI as its purely subjective. IMO from using HTC G1 Android since day 1, and later HTC devices, Sense is laggy as any other non Google original UI. It adds too much nonsense customizations hence sluggish.

The bold part is what I want to emphasize. This isn't how Android works. Apps are ALWAYS kept in a cache memory no matter how you want to change that, HTC or LG or any other vendors cannot and they don't reload apps but Android does. If the cache reaches quota, they're paged out.

Killing apps periodically like HTC does actually do more harm than good things, since apps are kept in cache for a number of reasons: fast access, less IO, etc. Cached memory are paged anyway if expires, so you don't have to worry about that. Reloading the apps and makes it reloads everything rather than just paged in from cache memory is a bad idea from OS perspective.

If you search my posts, I'm not an LG fan either, but I don't like the way you praise HTC.

Because they have equally ****ty software.

So which smartphone has the fastest UI AND excellent SQ ?

 

[club968]

My vote goes to the HTC, it seems the most fluid and least buggy. Ive owned pretty much all these phones within the last year so I speak from some experience. I am now using the Axon 7 and it's definitely pretty snappy and the sound is definitely top notch. I would've put it at the top if not for some bugs and the navigation keys that don't light up (I mean come on, What?!), But it's a great bargain none the less. The LG V20 doesn't feel as quick to me for some reason. The audio is prooooobably the best but I have to be really listening to the sound to even notice.