Technology

Sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine, DACs don't/shouldn't affect sound quality, they are just chips that convert a digital signal into the correct analog signal and even dirt cheap ones can do that far better than human hearing is capable of discerning. It is the amp circuit that can have different audio qualities depending on how well or poorly it is implemented.

Also, thinking 40GB fits 10 FLAC albums is stupid.

Sorry, you're right; it's more like around 20 of mine.

I can’t imagine putting this much effort into complaining about someone using their media player of choice.

I'm not complaining about their media player of choice; I'm remarking that the way they chose to discuss it in this article – especially being so focused on streaming – is stupid as fuck. Like 50% of this article is spent bitching about non-issues with phones. I don't even mean "non-issues" in the sense that they don't annoy me personally; I mean "non-issues" in the sense that this devolves into a comparison not of iPod versus smartphone but of iPod versus streaming, or that they're talking about it being so convenient not to have to worry about charging a second device. They can enjoy what they want to; the reasons they describe are, for the most part, asinine.

You’re not considering the iPod DAC which is higher quality than most cellphone DACs.

The author of this article certainly did consider DACs: [Modern smartphones have] got [...] a DAC chip that is by all measures transparent, near-lossless wireless streaming [...]" and that's the last they mention of the DAC, so they clearly don't give a shit about the Wolfson.

The fact they chose to wait until the middle of the article to say "yeah btw this thing is hardmodded for the battery and the storage" is so telling. That'd be the first thing I'd mention about a technological comparison.