Mobile Audio: High-Performance Audio from Smartphones?

In November 2015, audioXpress published a unique group testing on smartphone audio playback, focused on audio circuit quality and the performance of the playback DAC, as intended for wired headphone listening. The products under review included the iconic iPod classic, the iPhone 5s, the iPhone 6, Vivo Xplay 3S, Vivo X5 Max, HTC One M8, Samsung Galaxy S5, and Sony Xperia Z2.