Smartphone for the audiophile?

I use my Android phone to control J River Media Center on my PC using the J River developed app Gizmo. It does not run on iPhones. There are iPhone apps for this, but not from J River. So, you may want to narrow down just what you want to control and see what apps are out there for the major ones.

I had an HTC Arrive which was basically a Windows phone + Zune. It bettered the iPod touch for fidelity but my son will never let his iPhone 4S out of his hand for me to compare :<). Note that processer power and battery power are the key limiters for both Apple and Msoft portable device's audio fidelity

As an update to this thread, I recently purchased an HTC One which shows promise so far and works much better than my last phone.

Beautiful fit and finish to the screen and the enclosure and two, front facing, stereo speakers vs the iPhones single rear facing speaker.

More importantly, some forums suggest that the micro USB port will export digital audio and/or video easily?

It seems the typical phone user does not care, but for audiophiles this could be a breakthrough vs Apple's proprietary interface?

Not easy to find a micro USB A to mini USB B cable without using adapters and more than one cable. And I am not sure on the exact spec if anyone might know? Would this be the same as a "charging" cable with micro on one side and mini on the other?

But otherwise it seems you could go from smartphone out to a portable, external DAC such as a FiiO E17?

Look forward to any thoughts or ideas.

If you are looking for fidelity, you cannot beat the Pure i20 digital docking station. You will need a phone with 30-pin connector or a new iphone to 30-pin adapter cable. i20 is $85 on Amazon.com.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Steve,

Thank you - that's interesting and good to know. But not my thing to dock a portable device at my desk and in fact have a brand new in the box, never even opened Wadia dock that I impulsively purchased when they first came out and were back ordered.

What I am trying to do is to extract digital data from my HTC One smartphone (a Droid) when traveling and commuting - so I need it to be portable.

Here you can see another thread I found, as well as my question to the Android forum:

http://forums.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s4/287133-anybody-else-using-usb-otg-digital-audio-out.html

So if you know how I might find a cable with the right spec' would be grateful.

Surprised more people haven't figured this out amidst the popularity of smartphones, 3rd party headphones etc.

To the extent any phone is cool, sleek, slim etc, I would expect the equal and opposite reaction of a mediocre DAC and wimpy amp, correct?

Thank you,