DxOMARK is known for its smartphone camera reviews and while there are folks who take their reviews with a pinch of salt, manufacturers (read Chinese manufacturers) still brag about the scores of their smartphones. A few months ago, DxOMARK began scoring the selfie cameras for smartphones too and just last month, it announced that it would add night camera and ultrawide-angle scores to its camera test protocol since both have become popular features present in phones.

Today, DxOMARK has introduced a new test protocol for smartphones called the DxOMARL Audio Test Protocol. This tests a phone’s audio recording and output quality and is only based on the playback performance of the phone’s internal speakers not when paired to headphones or external speakers.

The overall score is split into playback and recording just the way a phone’s camera score is split into photo and video. The test is carried out by audio engineers and experts in special labs and can take up to a week for a single device. DxOMARK says during testing, they recreate multiple usage scenarios such as a  busy street. They also compare phones together during testing to make sure that their test scores are impartial.

At the moment, DxOMARK has tested seven devices they are the iPhone 11 Pro Max, iPhone XS Max, Galaxy Note10+, Galaxy S10+, Huawei Mate 20 X and Sony Xperia 1. Based on their test results, the Mate 20 X is at the top of the list and this is partly due to its stereo microphones which gives it a high score for recording.

The iPhone XS Max comes in second with a score of 74 points (Playback: 75, Recording: 69), pushing its successor the iPhone 11 Pro Max to third place with a score of 71 ((Playback: 72, Recording: 68). The Galaxy Note10+ and Galaxy S10+ score 66 and 65 points respectively, while the Honor 20 Pro and Xperia 1 close the list with a score of 53 points and 45 points respectively. The Honor 20 Pro and Xperia 1 not only score lowest but are the only two phones with a wide margin between their playback and recording scores.

DxOMARK says they will keep reviewing more devices and will keep updating the list, so if your favorite device isn’t on the list, it may be added in the future.

UP NEXT: Huawei Mate 30 Pro flies to the top of DxOMark’s ranking

(Source)

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