I have not tried a huge number of phones. Sony, Samsung and Xiaomi (in particular 10 and 12 Pro with sound from Harman-Kardon). My clear recommendation is Asus Zenphone 9. (There is a Zenphone 10 coming just now in July 2023, which is probably just as good).

Asus 9 has very good internal speakers, bluetooth is better and there is regular headphone jack. Give it a try if you are looking for better sound (tunedem) from a phone.

Phone reviews focus on cameras and various things but seldom the sound. The scandianavian Hi-Fi magazine LB (which stand for Sound and Picture, direct translation). But they did not mention the sound at all! These phone reviewers never do.

Robert Lake wrote: ↑2023-07-11 16:44 I have not tried a huge number of phones. Sony, Samsung and Xiaomi (in particular 10 and 12 Pro with sound from Harman-Kardon). My clear recommendation is Asus Zenphone 9.

What about Apple phones?

matthias wrote: ↑2023-07-12 09:33

Robert Lake wrote: ↑2023-07-11 16:44 I have not tried a huge number of phones. Sony, Samsung and Xiaomi (in particular 10 and 12 Pro with sound from Harman-Kardon). My clear recommendation is Asus Zenphone 9.

What about Apple phones?

I have not tried IPhones. I have compared it with my Ipad Pro 11" (second generation), which is not bad, but the Assus 9 is clearly better.

One of my interests is photography and since I primarily shoot with my phone nowadays, I upgrade quite often for a better camera. Right now I have two phones, iPhone 14 Pro Max and Xiaomi 13 Ultra. Between these two, the iPhone has a better sound by a great margin. Both for playback with the internal speakers but also through Bluetooth. Added to that, the iPhones are best at recording audio too.

Previously I tried Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and Pixel 7 Pro and none of them had better sound than the 14 Pro Max.

jajo wrote: ↑2023-07-12 23:12 ...none of them had better sound than the 14 Pro Max.

Thanks for sharing jajo,
another testimony that Apple care about SQ is that they offer laptops with great in-built DACs:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/2021-ma ... od.966558/

The problem with iphones is getting a decent signal to an external DAC. I've had no success.

sktn77a wrote: ↑2023-07-28 02:07 The problem with iphones is getting a decent signal to an external DAC. I've had no success.

Really, I have no problems there. I use an older model of this DAC with a lightning connection on one end and a headphone socket at the other end. https://www.adv-sound.com/collections/a ... ort-lite-l