I'm very surprised why EU or Samsung must assume that everyone is using the stupendous sounding stock IEM of any Android phone? At the very least, the end user should have the right to set their own volume limit. Are they not aware that there are many Android phone users that own high quality IEMs which need more power than the pathetic volume limit they force us to accept? If all they are trying to do is to save everyone's hearing then they'd do a better job by turning down the volume of all TV and Radio commercials.The S7 amp does have more power to give but it seems to be set quite a bit below maximum at a firmware level. On a rooted S7 you can change a few settings to bump up that power, the only problem is that you have to adjust the settings to reflect the type of headphones you are using, if you bump the power too much you get noise with more sensitive IEMs for example. Even the output from the DAC stage is set below maximum (32 of 48) if I recall. If you push the output all the way up it does introduce some distortion but at that level it was too loud with my K702s.
I'm not sure if Samsung did this to provide volume limiting/protection or if it has been done to extend battery life.
I'm in the UK so a stock S7 will have the EU limit imposed in any case but I'm sure the EU limited iPhone has an output of 0.5V whereas the S7 was 0.7V, maxed out I'm sure the S7 was up to more than 1.5V. I wouldn't swear to these figures though.
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