Hi everyone,
Thought I would post about an Android issue that is bugging me - the fact that despite USB Host functionality being present in ICS, USB DACs (digital audio converters, external sound cards if you will) do not work with our devices .
If they did work then we could use relatively cheap USB DACs with our Android phones and enjoy great music sound quality, no matter which cheap DAC/DSP the manufacturer has seen fit to include. Ever since I sold my Galaxy S, which has an excellent Wolfson DAC and can produce awesome sound quality with Voodoo Sound, the sound quality of my subsequent devices has rankled. Now with ICS this is a simple software fix, which makes it all the more irritating (someone has managed to add support for these in a Nook Colour kernel that works with CM9). To be honest I'm seriously considering buying an iPhone for the first time ever because they have this functionality out of the box.
Fortunately there is something we can do about this besides making ineffectual unhappy noises and waiting for customs ROMs etc to fix this - vote the issue up here: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=24614&sort=-stars&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20Stars
To vote just star the issue.
This issue needs 1200 votes to enter the top ten, which doesn't seem a big ask given the hundreds of millions of Android users out there...
Please star this and share this out to your social networks - help save me from having to continue think about getting an iPhone!
[UPDATE: Since starting to campaign for this issue 45 stars received so far, issue raised 11 places - thanks all who have voted so far - lets keep going!]