Audiophile phone of the year! The LG G8X. By Michael Bruce

Howdy folks uh today I wanted to go over um, so uh Hawaii bad boy made an uh video about how basically digital audio players. Apps are uh on the way out he's talking about how kids that he knows the young kids just couldn't care less about having a separate device other than their phone to play back audio stuff, and I completely get that um. My channel is sort of focused on mobile audio stuff, meaning I'm usually on the go. So I can't necessarily sit down at a desk and pull out a honking pile of audio equipment and listen to it. So over the years, I've sort of honed down what I consider to be the best uh phone experience and audio device for an audio file on the go- and this is what we're looking at right here. This is the um lg g8x yeah, just tap that and so um.

This phone here is obviously a dual screen phone um. A lot of folks probably have no clue about lg. They just it's sort of off the map. Nobody cares but uh. Let me just show you how this is so two screens right.

This thing that we're looking at is actually a case right. So that's this so um. The is the case. Itself is the second screen right, and it goes like that by the way I've got um tempered, glass protectors on all the screens, this front and um. Well, it's got a little um.

We call plastic protector on that back part, but um, so yeah so uh. Basically, the idea with this case is that you can either have it with two screens or just one and so to do that. You just kind of like pop this up right here, at least that's what I do. I push them back out and pop on out. So that's the second screen case, which is obviously USB um, like so yeah um, I'm just making sure there wasn't a serial number.

I cared about on that uh. So it looks like that um. I think you can get these for about 150, to 200 bucks, sorry about the fingerprints and touching it. So it's going to be what it is um and then just so, you know: there's a little tiny screen up yonder, it's a little like OLED screen that shows you um, it's like always on screen just the time and maybe like how many notifications you have it's pretty useless, basically, but it's there so um! This is how you might want to use this device as an audio player, and then this is just the actual phone itself right, cool, so um. If I'm mobile, I'm probably not taking the second screen, I'm probably doing something like this right.

Just a nice little um protector by the way end screen fingerprint reader, which even worked well. It works about 60 at the time um. So that's how that looks. This is sort of the mobile uh setup and desk setup would be with that guy, which is actually pretty cool so anyway, um so uh features. Let me: stick it back in the audio file up for a desk, so we can see why or at least one of the reasons I love this um, and I'm not going to go into the freaking specs of every stupid thing on this phone because yeah, let's turn that screen on and just do that and there we are okay, so um, you know it's got a lot of memory and all that's just this one's got 128 gigabytes of internal memory.

It's got an uh SD card slot uh. I think just one sim, probably and anything that matters a nice awesome, headphone jack, it's waterproof, you know those things kind of like add up to something it and one of the big things why I like this? It has a flat screen, so the edges are not rounded off god. I can't tell you how hard it is to protect those with a tempered glass protector, but something like this. You can just buy yourself. A pack of you know three or whatever for five seven bucks, and you're good to go um and I do smash the screen protectors.

All the time, so this is like actually important to me as having a flat screen and the lg g8 has a corners have like a 2.5 d or whatever the hell. They call that edges so um. It is harder to protect and um also has a smaller battery now uh, because this has two screens by the way. These are both OLED screens uh, which is cool for being outside. You can actually see it.

We got the brightness cranked all the way up. You can go down all the way to like so and then, of course, my camera blows it out, but uh. Let me just turn it up there. We go um yeah, so uh, 4, 000 William hour battery in this half and there's no battery in the case itself, so um. If you're running, if you're rocking two screens, then that becomes pretty good.

I can get a whole day out of uh, pretty good usage, maybe eight hours of on-screen time, maybe yeah about that. Actually, I've heard eight to ten uh. I usually don't use phones as phones that much but um see. Then you take the second screen off and then this thing runs like twice as long, so you'll get like I'm not joking, two or three days. I usually forget to charge this at least once every other day and uh.

It does have wireless charging, so you know you just toss it on a wireless charger and whenever you remember- and it's pretty much good all the time the battery life on this is pretty well stunning. It's just like Jesus also, you know, like I said I rock it mostly during the day with just the one screen. So at the end of the day, I'm usually like eighty percent, and I'm listening to music and stuff. Anyway, you get the point four thousand William hour battery awesome. Now, I'm not too heavy.

It actually has stereo speakers so uh, just this half so there's like a speaker up on top and then a speaker um, I think down here and then there's I'm not sure if there's one like in, I don't think, there's one here. It's on the bottom right down here, but uh any case. So when you're, if you're looking at him, you know watching a movie or YouTube, it does sound like stereo if you're looking at it, which is actually really nice, the other lg's, don't have that. I don't think I never noticed it anyway, um so like in this format we're going to just rock. So I got a couple of things.

I got power amp! That's my favorite music player. I got USB uh audio player pro um. This ear studio app is to control the rad stone es100, which is like um a little headphone amp. That's awesome for on-the-go stuff, so you're not tethered to your phone with the cable uh, and then I got the built-in um lg music, app, which is actually good and for people that care bypasses the uh, android, mixer and resample, so the built-in music app does that just to let folks know in case you don't want to screw around with anything else, power amp. So on this phone power, amp um doesn't seem to support Bluetooth HD.

So in other words, if you're running Bluetooth out of this, it appears that it actually re-uh. Well, it sends it through the uh, android mixer and then out of whatever you're doing um. Not all the lg's are like that, and I believe it's probably just uh power amp needs an update for this phone, it's kind of new and maybe not so popular, so they haven't updated it yet, but it does in fact support the direct HD through the headphone jack for the quad DAC, which is over here. I don't really say that, but the headphone jack on this is as good as it gets on any phone, absolutely 100 percent. So here's our quad DAC just tap that it's got some features.

Um, basically, you've got some stuff in here, you'll, never use I never normalized. It would ever do that. It's got an equalizer. I also don't equalize in this because I don't um DTS 3d surround nah and then so all this is grayed out because I don't have headphones plugged in. But let's do that.

So we got some stuff. We can poke now, so you got left and right balance, obviously very easy. We got um presets, who cares just EQS, and then we got digital filters and I swear. I can hear these on this. This is crazy, but yeah.

These are really easy to hear on this device. I don't know if that means it's good or bad, but anyways. So as far as the headphone jack goes um folks that don't know about lg stuff, this headphone jack detects whether your headphones are. Oh god, it's like, I think, 50 ohms or above impedance, and then sets the amplifier uh to be able to power those type of headphones. So if it's below 50 you get like a lower power version of it.

So there's a trick, which is your just stick in a little um say like a couple inch headphone extender into the jack, wait a second and then plug your headphones into the extender and that tricks it because the jack has infinite uh um resistance uh, because it's still like a line out sort of thing. So basically it sets the phone into line out mode which is like. Maybe I don't know it's got a lot more power than just without with the low impedance mode which most headphones will trigger. Actually, most aims will trigger so um. Basically, I do tend to take the little uh extender with me just in case I feel like I want a little extra mph on it in general, though all my aims, you turn this up like you, you might get up to like 80 90, but it will power them in low impedance mode with no problems and doesn't sound funny um.

As far as the sound signature that says, quad saber, ESS saber DAC, and it sounds definitely better than any other phone you'll ever run into and quite likely better than a lot of standalone devices whatever they might be. This is just power amps little visualizer, so this thing is highly recommended. You could easily just rock this plug your headphones in and be happy for life like seriously it's its really that good. If someone told me to a b test this with, like my rad stone es100 uh headphone jack versus that, I would probably have a relatively difficult time doing it. It's.

It's very good, in fact: um I'm going to do some a b testing, because I just never really did it, but I kind of think this actually might have slightly higher quality headphone out than the es100, which is your know very good um. Does it sound as good as my favorite device ever just about? This? Is my well not ever okay, but this thing has some good synergy with some of my headphones um and so uh. This also has very good synergy with all my headphones um, which one's better. Well, this has one lot of power, so it's it'll nuke this thing, the lg in actual power um, but um, I'm gonna call this thing, let's say well, definitely an plus for a mobile phone for audio, but in terms of overall, like just I don't know on the scale of oh we'll, say, 1 to 10, 10 being like the best device ever, maybe it's a 7 or an 8. You know something like that.

Um other folks might argue with me on that, but it's quite good. The output impedance on this oh gee. I should have like on the phone itself I should have tested this before. I made the video uh, but I do remember reading that it's its fairly low, it's like, but not the lowest ever um. Furthermore, I think the point is it was low enough to where it should never affect any kind of headphones.

Uh frequency response. It was maybe under one ohm, so anyways um. Just to give you an idea of what's going on here is USB audio player, and you know versus a digital audio player. This thing is lightning fast. I've been giving a break.

You know we're doing two phones here by the way. In case you care, you could do something crazy, like you know, fire up some YouTube on this side and listen to music over here um. Well, I don't think you can play two audio streams of android. Well, anyway, you get the point. You do two things I could surf.

I could do something else, um, so uh, let's see, is there anything else that we care about on this so excellent battery life? The headphone jack is amazing. Oh, I should say it's got DAC and in terms of its Bluetooth, reception, uh or sending. Well, it's not reception. The Bluetooth antenna that sends out to a receiver device is stunningly good. This thing is as good as you'll ever find on anything.

It's like 30 feet through walls. Things like that more even it's fantastic you'll never have cutouts, and also I use DAC at 990 kilobits per second, which is like its top setting on this, and you'll get at least 15 20 feet away, um at least, and no problems uh. So that's I think, as the bit rate goes up, you maybe need a stronger signal. I'm not sure, but you get the point. It's damn good, it's as good as you'll ever get on any phone, no question bar none um.

So this is the audio file phone of 2020. In my opinion, and maybe 2021- I don't know who knows it'll come out this next year, but um also price. So I bought this for 450. It was like an open box and uh. You can get these well, the guy that told me kind of about them.

To begin with. I think he bought his for maybe 350. He got a perfect deal he's in another country. This is by the way the North America unlocked version of this. If you get a branded like a sprint or a t, you're screwed, if you try and use that on another carrier, you have to get the unlocked uh version, probably well.

I think this. This actual version was uh worked in India and other ones too, so really cool um, so yeah 450 500 from Amazon during like just the last month and for a dual screen phone with all of these features. Uh also that the processors, like maybe one generation down from the top of the line, but it's superfast. Who cares? I don't know, I don't play games or do any of that crap. It's plenty good enough for anything, um and extremely faster than any DAP you'll ever stick your hands on.

There's no question about that. It's ridiculously fast, so I wanted to go over this phone. Maybe some folks would enjoy this if they're on the market for a new phone and wanted something that works well with audio. You can rock this. I got a 512 gig SD in here it's got 128.

So that's a lot of memory babies, but also uh. Just to let you guys know it does. Um have the Google camera app and if anyone's used, lg's camera, sometimes it's good, sometimes bad. But the Google camera app works on this, and you get all that extra color science that Google bakes into that. So that's! I always rock that on my phones, cool all right guys have a great day bye.

Source : Michael Bruce