the newer cell-phone-yet-unconnected Sony Walkmans are pretty neat, and they have some nice DAC features.
The price is steep, but not Apple steep.
Which means then figuring out that process. And I couldn't find people describing how they used a Walkman for listening to podcasts.
At least on Android versions of the Walkmans.
I am detail oriented, which contributes to the quality of the software I develop. That level of attention to detail extends to other areas. For example, I read all of the license agreements I'm told that I have to assent to. This makes it really hard for me to agree to all of the automatic software updates, which update the license agreement, so I disable updates until I have the time to read the new license.
(As an aside, OmniGroup has the best proprietary license I've read, and I've commended them for it. And I've complained to ORCId that they claim their signup takes only seconds, which means they don't expect people to read their license.)
So one reason I prefer FOSS is that I don't to read the #%^#$^ licenses.
If I switch to the Android ecosystem, and sign up to Google's app store, I expect have to read pages of legalese - which I don't care to do.
I understand that most people are not this way. I hope you understand that some people are not like you.
From some of your other comments, I gathered that you aren't heavily into using smartphones, so there's no reason you have to subscribe to the _full_ experience of it, proprietariness and all. Our devices are only as complicated as we allow them to be.
I totally understand if you want something that works out of the box too, the rest of us who would like a functional experience with the creature comforts of smart-devices have to go out of our way to debloat and tweak things because these experiences are not yet readily available for us.
Don't know what you could/should use on the software side though to manage the content... Life has changed a lot since I last used strictly offline devices, and not only for the better.