But I do still think search would be nice

I gave them all my feedback, and they have said that firmware updates will bring this and other features in as improvements. This isn’t in users’ hands yet, so (ironically) my waffling review actually did some help for them and users who end up with them!

No, this is the on/off (and lock) switch, by pressing it in, but it is the volume wheel!

Hi there!

I am not Gardiner, but he is one of my best friends! While you’ll know Gardiner from his YouTube (I assume!), he and I run the site together, equally. His focus will be no surprise to you, but mine is almost entirely the gaming scene, and then some forays into new things :)

I had a LG G6 for awhile, which had the lovely focus of quad-DAC and made sound beautiful

Such a shame they no longer make phones :(

Edit: worth saying: thanks for posting this though, I am interested in seeing gadgets and it is an interesting design and has unique features.

Thank you! Don’t worry, zero offense taken! These things are pretty niche these days, so you’re well and truly in the majority with that POV!

I can take my phone and stream music from my server. If I really want to I can download to the phone (simple drag and drop KDE connect style or syncthing if I want to go that route). I use only FLAC by the way.

This is the important part here, the quality of those files is dependent on the DAC your phone has. Phones don’t place much emphasis on high-quality DAC implementation because they’re built more for things like for convenience, battery life, and mass-market audio (think Bluetooth earbuds and streaming compression). They’ll play your FLACs for sure, but the internal DAC and amp stage are usually an afterthought rather than a focus.

This one’s built around the Cirrus Logic CS43198 chip, which has one purpose in life: make sound good!

In the end these won’t be super convenient for most. But there’s plenty of people who want to drop using their phone for everything now, or who want to try out a new way of listening to music.

A few months back I had a grand plan about buying a ton of options, going from entry level to high-end, a refurbished and done up iPod, a Zune, a feature on the PSP’s sound capabilities…but after two or three I got distracted

Reviewing this was a pleasure, and reminded me why something like this little fellow is magic for music. The sound difference between FLAC on this V.S. streaming is enormous!

I’m so glad you liked my artivle/review/impressions! :)