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My HTC 10 died a couple of months back. I actually replaced it with a Pixel 3a (and Dragonfly Black) Loved that phone, the default audio was fantastic.

by ck425 6y ago

boring_twenties 6y ago
Yeah, I too used the HTC M8 and then 10, because of the audio. Since then I have been using the NextDrive SpectraX. I highly recommend it, it sounds even better than the HTC 10, and now I can use (almost) whatever phone I want. edit: Oops, I missed that you specified you were already using a DragonFly. Is that not as good as the HTC 10 was? I would have thought it'd be better...
- ck425 6y ago
  It was, lost it last weekend unfortunately. Replaced it with a Speaka, which so far is basically a slightly better dragonfly black for half the price. I still appreciate a good headphone jack though. The usb-c connectors aren't always reliable and ignoring inline controls. A phone with a solid DAC & amp would be best. Unfortunately it seems only LG make those these days and their Android skin is horrible.
  - boring_twenties 6y ago
    I too, enjoyed having it builtin with the HTC 10, but having basically zero choice in phones became a serious problem. One thing with the 10 was that security updates were basically nonexistent. You got one or two major OS updates, but nothing in between, and nothing after. Lots of phones have this problem, but then again some don't. Worse than that, the Oreo update completely broke my phone. I went from 2-3 days of battery life with my typical, light usage to something like 12-16 hours with NO usage, screen completely off the entire time. Fixing that required downgrading to Nougat, which required S-OFF, which required me physically mailing my phone to a hacker group and paying around $35. And of course this left me a year or more behind in security patches. Based on the xda thread about this, it affected lots of people, but was never acknowledged or fixed. Consider yourself lucky :) The LG phones are, one would hope, not this bad. But still, my takeaway from the experience is that tethering (heh) oneself to a single model or line or phones is really, really bad. The inconvenience of the dongle is, in retrospect, only slightly annoying in comparison. And there can be significant cost savings. My Moto G6 and SpectraX together cost less than one of LG's phones, and I expect to reuse the SpectraX with my next phone as well. Buying a new DAC/AMP every 1-3 years doesn't really seem right, does it?

My HTC 10 died a couple of months back. I actually replaced it with a Pixel 3a (and Dragonfly Black) Loved that phone, the default audio was fantastic.

by ck425 6y ago

My HTC 10 died a couple of months back. I actually replaced it with a Pixel 3a (and Dragonfly Black) Loved that phone, the default audio was fantastic.

boring_twenties 6y ago

Yeah, I too used the HTC M8 and then 10, because of the audio. Since then I have been using the NextDrive SpectraX. I highly recommend it, it sounds even better than the HTC 10, and now I can use (almost) whatever phone I want. edit: Oops, I missed that you specified you were already using a DragonFly. Is that not as good as the HTC 10 was? I would have thought it'd be better...

ck425 6y ago
It was, lost it last weekend unfortunately. Replaced it with a Speaka, which so far is basically a slightly better dragonfly black for half the price. I still appreciate a good headphone jack though. The usb-c connectors aren't always reliable and ignoring inline controls. A phone with a solid DAC & amp would be best. Unfortunately it seems only LG make those these days and their Android skin is horrible.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  I too, enjoyed having it builtin with the HTC 10, but having basically zero choice in phones became a serious problem. One thing with the 10 was that security updates were basically nonexistent. You got one or two major OS updates, but nothing in between, and nothing after. Lots of phones have this problem, but then again some don't. Worse than that, the Oreo update completely broke my phone. I went from 2-3 days of battery life with my typical, light usage to something like 12-16 hours with NO usage, screen completely off the entire time. Fixing that required downgrading to Nougat, which required S-OFF, which required me physically mailing my phone to a hacker group and paying around $35. And of course this left me a year or more behind in security patches. Based on the xda thread about this, it affected lots of people, but was never acknowledged or fixed. Consider yourself lucky :) The LG phones are, one would hope, not this bad. But still, my takeaway from the experience is that tethering (heh) oneself to a single model or line or phones is really, really bad. The inconvenience of the dongle is, in retrospect, only slightly annoying in comparison. And there can be significant cost savings. My Moto G6 and SpectraX together cost less than one of LG's phones, and I expect to reuse the SpectraX with my next phone as well. Buying a new DAC/AMP every 1-3 years doesn't really seem right, does it?