I bought an LG with replaceable battery and expandable memory c. 2018, and won’t downgrade to a phone without those two required features. It talks, texts, browses, navigates, and plays music from a headphone jack. That’s all I need.
Thought this was a pretty killer deal. One downside is that this will not get Android 14 and onwards, but for my use case this is a very good deal and something which I don’t care about. This was a flagship phone, only two years ago.
For context, I use an iPhone 13 Pro as my daily driver, but I’ve always wanted a dedicated media/music player. I plan on using this thing as a DAP (digital audio player). Compared to other pure dedicated DAP’s in the $400 price range (from FiiO, iBasso, HIBY, Shanling), this phone blows them basically all out the water (at the cost of not being as compact, which I also don’t really care about) from an overall package perspective.
This phone has a 3.5mm headphone jack AND is literally the only high-end modern Android phone currently that has a dedicated DAC chip since LG stopped making phones (this has an ESS 9280AC DAC chip, which was used in some variation in the LG VXX and GX phone lineups and which were also rated highly for their audio performance). Getting an awesome screen (144Hz AMOLED HDR10+ with a 1400 nits peak brightness; 360Hz touch sampling rate), killer battery life (6000 mAh), a super beefy processor (Snapdragon 888+), Android 13, Dirac-tuned speakers, premium build quality, as well as a dedicated DAC chip is basically unheard of in the DAP market. Even the later ROG phones (ROG Phone 6 and 7) or Asus Zenfones don’t have a dedicated DAC chip - they use the integrated Qualcomm DAC.
I bought a used LG G8 a couple months back and was using that as a DAP, and that thing was really showing its age. The UI elements were slow, laggy, and was overall not a great experience. This should be miles better.
Even the Sony Xperia line doesn’t have a dedicated DAC chip - they use the integrated Qualcomm DAC.
For IEM’s - the power output on this thing should be plenty, so for those looking for a DAP or a pure media player, this is a solid buy and offers really great value (if you’re fine with the large screen size and gamer aesthetic). With UAPP, you can also bypass Android’s stupid resampling of all audio to 48Khz, and listen to audio bitperfect. Obviosuly, $1000 DAP’s may provide better sound quality and be more compact. But that’s all your getting. They will have a much worse processor, worse screen, lesser amount of RAM, laggier UX, and an older version of Android. You’re basically buying a gimped phone. The ROG Phone 5s at this price is actually an insane value for what you’re getting audio-wise. And, you can also use it as a phone!
Sadly there is also no expandable storage, but 512GB internal is enough for me since I’ll mainly be streaming Hi-Res audio locally through UAPP or through its Tidal integration.
For audio performance, read this article - https://www.hypethesonics.com/rog-phone5s-minihype/
You can also use this code “APNC10” to knock off $10, which brings it down to $389 pre-tax. This may be an affiliate code, but it was a code that was inputted for me and worked when I used the Honey extension, so I don’t really know. If you’re curious about its price history, its previous all-time low according to Google’s price tracker was $499 (on Nov 1), so you’re basically shaving off an additional $110