The "Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders" vs ROG5 Preview: Branded vs Original
by Andrei Frumusanu on August 16, 2021 10:00 AM ESTAudio - 3.5mm vs TWS Argument
We’ve seen the industry move away from 3.5mm jacks to promote wireless audio – and the Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders is a good example of that , especially in the juxtaposition against the ROG Phone 5 which does feature the jack.
Qualcomm here is risking quite a bit in terms of promoting their “Snapdragon Sound” brand – the MW08S earbuds case literally have a “How sound should sound” label inside of the battery case – a statement that’s almost certain to backfire if the earbuds don’t actually perform admirably well.
Starting off with frequency response curves, I pitted the MW08S against a pair of Jabra 75T’s which Qualcomm also had sent out in last year’s Hawaii event, as well as a pair of $27 BLON-BL03’s wired headphones which are regarded as performing extremely well for the price range. The measurements here were calibrated to 90db SPL pink noise, and all earbuds were using identical tips.
Unfortunately, the MW08s seem to be characterised by a large trough at 2.5KHz as well as larger peaks at 5.5KHz. Generally, I would ignore anything above 10KHz as my measurement setup here isn’t particularly accurate to proper professional equipment. The Jabra units provide a much flatter sound signature, though there’s quite a notable low bass boost.
MW08 Distortion
A further problematic aspect of the M&D buds is a peak of very high distortion from 3.5 to 6KHz, peaking at over >6% THD+N, which is a quite horrible figure. On the positive side, low frequencies on the MW08’s are very clean.
Jabra 75t Distortion
The Jabra 75t’s in comparison have worse bass characteristics, however the majority of distortions are mostly kept under 1% THD, with only a smaller peak at 2.8KHz.
The high distortion characteristics of the MW08’s are I think responsible for a much narrower and more muddy sound-stage, that well inferior to the much cheaper Jabra earbuds.
Again, to be able to be able to properly convey the sound experience, I’m recording and comparing actual music (the excellently mastered Chris Jones – Long After You Are Gone) as recorded on the MW08’s compared to the aforementioned BL-03 wired headphones. As a reference, I’m also switching over audio to the original audio track source, and switching in-between the sources and recordings as highlighted in the video. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to record the Jabra 75t units in stereo due to the units disconnecting from each other in the test rig, and recombining independently recorded channels resulted in an inaccurate representation.
There are two important aspects to note about the MW08’s – although the instrumentals are quite good, it’s noticeable that the vocals are very much underrepresented and feel a bit muffled, which would correspond to that 2.5KHz trough in the FR. Secondly, this recording in my view gives a good representation of the narrow sound stage of the MW08’s, which is very evident compared to both the original source as well as the BL-03’s. The MW08’s here also fared worse than the Jabra 75t’s which also had a much wider sound stage and imaging capabilities.
Finally, I wanted to take opportunity to talk about TWS DAC noise. Because wireless earbuds/headphones generally have to deal with battery power, their DACs are amplifiers are generally quite weak and more conservative in their designs, in order to achieve better battery life. One aspect that’s I’ve noted for years here is that most audio solutions still suffer from horrible noise floor characteristics, which is accentuated by extremely slow and non-responsive noise gating. Noise gating is when the DAC cuts off its output to the speakers.
Overall, the MW08’s – while for me had quite good and respectable ANC, just in my opinion fell apart when it comes to audio quality at this price range. The Jabras at half the price sound significantly better, and both get blown away by a set of $27 Chi-Fi 3.5mm wired earphones.
Unfortunately the industry’s move to drop 3.5mm jacks is very much motivated by the much higher profit margins of TWS – however at $299 and part of this $1499 Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders package that presents itself as “How sound should sound”, this strategy just falls apart and is rather quite insulting, especially considering the cheaper ROG Phone 5 is able to provide true high fidelity sound via the 3.5mm jack.
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Spunjji - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - link
Willing to bet that the image samples on that DXOMark review won't gel with the official rating...Kangal - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - link
Came here to say the same thing.I expect QC to be worse than ASUS in photography, or at the best; not much better.
The ASUS RoG 5, gets so much right that it is one of the best phones of 2021. My only suggestions would be to make it smaller and lighter, better ergonomics, durability upgrades, perhaps IP68 certification, more available/affordable, and have better software support (AndroidOne? Bootloader?). Overall, its great and only outdone by the Sony phones.
s.yu - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - link
Actually they may well do, I think they're cherry-picking the samples in recent years, at least for certain devices. Perception could be manipulated by manually discarding samples with minor focusing errors, vibrations, AWB issues, questionable lighting etc. and that could matter more than the actual performance of the device.Of course anybody could do that, but it's DXO we're talking about.
Mil0 - Wednesday, August 18, 2021 - link
Review is posted https://www.dxomark.com/smartphone-for-snapdragon-...It seems like dxomark reviewed the phone themselves, and they did find some issues with the algorithms.
BAllen - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - link
Most people don't know that the Adreno 660 is just a 5nm overclocked Adreno 650. They both have the same 1,024 ALU count and design. The Adreno 650/+ runs at 540MHz-670MHz depending on the phone. The Adreno 660 runs at 840MHz. With these SOC's performance scales almost perfect. Each 100MHz clock bump gives the GPU a 100GFlops of FP32 compute. The Adreno 650/+ is rated at 1.2TFlops-1.38TFlops FP32. The Adeno 660 is rated at 1.78TFlops FP32. So you see the picture. And yes i said TFlops. Phones now have 1Teraflop+ GPU's. What's even better is a SD865 device with an Adreno 650 that holds a sustained clock can basically match a overheating, throttling 660.BAllen - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - link
Also, the ROG 5's 2Vrms 3.5mm headphone jack uses the latest 32bit ESS SABRE qDAC and can push 700Ω 🎧. That with a 6000mAh battery and dual USB-C 3.1 has HDMI and MicroSD storage. So, its basically an upgrade for LG users. Though, i'm plenty happy with my modded LG v60 running A11 and Note 20 U5. The SD865/+ is all anyone would actually ever need for the next 5 years. That's why i bought 2 of each. With the v60 only costing $350-$400 new and the Note 20 UG at $600, who could pass on those deals. I got one v60 basically running at a HTPC hooked up to my LG OLED with a 512GB MicroSD loaded up.Kangal - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - link
It's been a while since I've looked into the iGPU performance of phones.But with figures like that, it's pretty close to the power of the XB1 and PS4. Impressive. Not to mention, it getting access to newer software/hardware features, and using a more powerful CPU, you could argue they're even closer to that mainstream-2013-benchmark. Well, that is if you actually dock the phone and give it a steady supply of electricity and use some sort of Active Cooling to regulate it.
Then you have Apple. They might actually be more powerful (slightly) than last-gen console's performance. Add the SteamDeck to the conversation, and it's a good time to be a mobile gamer.
zodiacfml - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - link
dont know whats going with Q these days. they should have Apple M1 like hardware by now but no, we get this 🤮abufrejoval - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - link
Looks like you're trying to get somebody fired.Just sure hope it's not you!
CyborgAlienRay - Wednesday, August 18, 2021 - link
I wouldn't waste $1500 on an alpha device that's not even remarkable by any means, let alone one with no 3.5mm jack or can remain cool, or have removable memory, the additional headphones are worthless for me, so what about 16GB DRAM, the fact it's got 512GB of ReadOnlyMemory is great but, still not for the additional $500. Wishy-washy camera, overheating, and complete 5G networks doesn't add up to $1400, the rest are boring stats, it even doesn't have the next gen of processors in it, which may have gone a long ways but, still not worth that. Even looks cheap, not sure if that's a Qualcomm decision or an Asus one but, someone dropped the leaded loaded iron ball on someone's head on that one for sure.