I stopped playing music on my Android phone and went back to my iPod

As an old-school techie whose formative years were spent tinkering with tape decks and portable CD players, I find that modern Android phones are nothing short of miracles of engineering for audio consumption. They’ve got a screen that rivals my high-end television, a DAC chip that is by all measures transparent, near-lossless wireless streaming, more storage than you can shake a stick at, and enough processing power to run a small datacenter.

Yet, when I want to sit down and actually listen to an album, the phone is often the most frustrating tool in my pocket. Between the constant pings from Slack and the AI-generated discovery feeds that keep trying to shove viral tracks down my throat, the simple act of listening has become a chore. It shouldn’t have been this way. A fully connected device like the phone in your pocket, with access to practically every track in existence, should offer the best listening experience. But, in practice, it’s just not true.