How come FiiO Q1 Mark II is not advertised as a DAC for android phones?
Here, I would like to make an explanation about the frequently asked question here: Could Q1 Mark II support Android phones?
The answer is YES. During the development, Q1 MKII working with Android phones had been a target of our R&D department. We had run tests with many android phones that were released within these two years including those with Micro USB port and Type-C port. We even opened a mound to produce a batch of dedicated USB cables for this. However, we didn't plan to advertise that Q1 MKII could work with android phones. Some of you might think that it's quite silly not advertising this. But why don't we do that?
<Adaptor cable designed for android phones>
There're two reasons:
1. Uncertainty of system compatibility
In 2013, FiiO released the first DAC&Amp E18 for android phones. Its feature is working as s DAC with android phones. Therefore, we'd spent tons of time on testing and adapting with the android phones on the market. We even had the List of phones E18 supports on our website at the time. And our agents and users voluntarily give us feedback and enrich the list. And after that we would recommend our customers to check the list before buying E18 and thought that this could solve all the problems and no complaints any more.
However, thing is not as simple as we thought. Since the android phone brands, models and system versions are too many and term of validity of the list is short, some phones that could work with E18 before suddenly couldn't work with it after system update. Some phones that couldn't work with E18 suddenly could work with E18 after update. Besides the compatible issue resulting from system, there is also the connection problem. There're two kinds of ports on android phones: Micro USB and Type-C. Some of them could support OTG while some couldn't. And the products coming from the same series of one brand would vary with the launch time.
<E18 using with cellphones>
2. It might cause phones to supply power to Q1MKII
The last thing you wanna see is that the DAC shortens the battery life of your cellphone. Since the USB port definition of android phones are different, some phones would recognize the OTG device then supply power and play music. The battery consumption would be huge for the cellphone. Then you might be in awkward situation: the DAC still has power but your cellphone is out of juice. This would affect your use of cellphone.
The above two problems could be easily solved on iPhone. Since we've used the dedicated chips from Apple, we don't have to worry about the compatibility after firmware update. And the DAC would stop charging when it recognizes the iPhone. Since there're too many android phone brands on the market and there's no unified port definition, we could only make the Q1MKII compatible with some hot-selling models on the market.
Though we had tested Q1 MKII with most of the hot-selling android phones on the market, we don't advertise Q1MKII could support android phones and describe this in the product introduction. We need to be responsible to our users and we don't want this to be a trouble to our users. Meanwhile, we're already working on the scheme for Type-C port in the hope of using dedicated USB cable+FiiO app to achieve digital output. However, we wouldn't advertise this unless we could actually achieve this. Please kindly understand.
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PS
Compatibility with Sony DAPs
If you want to use the Q1MKII as a DAC for Sony WM series players, you will have to use the USB adaptor cable from Sony. For example, the WMC-NWH10 sold in Japan. The DIY decoding cable that some MOJO users buy are also upgraded from this adaptor cables by changing the Micro connector.
<SONY WMPort , Adaptor cable WMC-NWH10 for Third-party DAC>
One end is WMPort ,and the other end is USB female connector
As to Sony PHA series DAC, you just need the included cable to use with WM series players. But that cable doesn't work with DACs of other brands, because Sony has restrictions on the cable just like Apple. Of course Sony hopes that WM series player users could buy the PHA series DAC and that's understandable. So if you want to use the Sony WM series players with other brands' DAC, you would need the adaptor cable mentioned above.
