It's a Creative Zen Stone that I got as a Christmas gift in 2008. I just found it in a drawer, and it's still holding charge. The last thing I put on it was The Life And Times Of Scrooge by Tuomas Holopainen, in 2015 -- I don't know why, at that time I definitely had a smartphone.
It has a headphone jack, which immediately makes it better than every smartphone produced in the last several years, and it can easily drive my 80-ohm Beyerdynamic. The audio quality is as good as one can expect. The only drawback is that it only holds 1GB... my old CD rips had to be compressed to hell and back.
Let me reiterate that this has been sitting untouched for a decade and was immediately ready for action. No login, no annoying software updates, expired subscription, or remote bricking by the manufacturer. Eat my shorts, Spotify Car Thing.
P.s. A Lifetime Of Adventure is a banger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWwSVOo5K_k
I've been thinking of picking up something I can install rockbox on for a while, but I've been getting a lot of mileage out of Youtube Music Revanced (hacked yt music app with no ads without paying for premium).
That said,I've been putting off replacing my phone (screen is held on with tape) because I can't easily get a new one with a headphone jack. So maybe new phone without, use bluetooth and ytmusic vanced in the car, then a dedicated old school mp3 player for non-car listening.
I rep their products so much I've been accused of being a shill, but I switched to Chinese brand smartphones years ago and will never look back. While US manufacturers were deleting features, Chinese manufacturers were adding them.
My current phone is an Ulefone Armor 18t, which features a 3.5mm jack, sd card slot, notification led, 6x led array flashlight, microscope, thermal camera, and a battery that lasts 3 days. And this is one of their older models, most of their newer phones come with floodlights, night vision cameras, and screens on both sides. There are dozens of other Chinese phone brands that are compatible with US 5g networks to chose from.
Good news: midrange phones are also taking out headphone jacks and memory card slot more and more :D
Is there a Chines phone that is as small as a Pixel 5 (or smaller?), with decent hardware/ram?
I don't even need a great processor, just good enough. I don't play games (other than things like Solitaire or Backgammon), but I multi-task like mad, so ram is more important than anything.
I've been looking at one of the Unihertz Jelly phones. I'm a bit concerned about the mediatek, but they're well priced so it' s not a bad gamble.
I actually just switched from a Pixel 5 to the Jelly Max last week and I've been pretty happy with it so far. My Pixel 5 was starting to have problems and I hate that it's considered a "small" phone now.
My only real complaints about the Jelly Max are that the touchscreen is less sensitive, the camera is not as good, and there's no 3.5mm jack, but they're far from dealbreakers IMO. I haven't noticed that it's any worse at multitasking and I've read you can get better performance out of the camera with 3rd party camera apps but haven't gotten around to figuring that out yet. It is about as heavy and twice as thick as the Pixel 5, but I personally feel like the thickness makes it a little more ergonomic to hold one-handed.
Oh, cool, thanks for the insight.
Interesting that it's thicker, does it have a bigger battery?
The battery is about the same size (~4000mAh), it's just thicker because they had to cram it into a smaller area :)
Not sure, I like the rugged phones so I couldnt recommend a smaller model offhand, though I know they exist.