Smartphone for the audiophile?

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.

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,

Mapman,

Right, but that sounds like something a normal person would say, not an "audiophile".

It seems to me that BOTH devices can climb way up the audiophile mountain by simply bypassing the internal DAC and amp?

With Apple, this seems to be more proprietary, subject to licenses, docking stations etc.

With Droid, this seems to be more open source and easy to achieve, albeit with the right cable which I still cant find.

I did not have any luck finding a cable to test this theory with my HTC One and my Antelope Zodiac.

However, it turns out that FiiO is just getting in on the act with the new E18 device: an external DAC / headphone amp that plugs directly into the HTC One among other Droids, with its own supplied cable.

If UPS arrives today, will have more info soon, but imagine this will be a dramatic improvement and a must have for any self respecting audiophile with a Droid.