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> I don't want a smartphone OS, because then the battery life is inevitably going to be many times worse than the standalone mp3 player batteries of old. I don't need an app store, or a battery-sucking high quality display screen for watching videos. I just want it to play my music.

I think you're overcomplicating this.

Modern mobile SoCs have evolved hand-in-hand with Android OS to be power efficient, perhaps equivalent or even better than the iPod Classic SoCs of the 2008 era. Using a modern 14nm or smaller process on a modern smartphone SoC isn't going to consume much power at all, even when running Android.

The screen is primarily for the GUI, not video playback. If you have a giant music library, navigating with a full, responsive screen is far better than spinning the old iPod click wheel. The screen can turn off when you're not interacting with it.

The products you're describing basically exist: https://www.fiio.com/m15 Battery life is around 15 hours, it has very high quality components, it has modern charging ports, and you can drop a 2TB card in it for twice as much storage as you need.

However, like all niche products it's not cheap. I think when most people see the price of a specialty, low-volume product like this they quickly become more than happy with just playing the music out of their phone.

I also wanted to mention Fiio. I've got the lower-end M3K myself, but it does run Rockbox for what I consider to be the classic MP3 player experience.

Is that better then the default fiio software?

It's $1200? How the market for DAPs really went up in price or something?

It sounds like the Shanling M0 fits your bill: https://en.shanling.com/product/222

I've used it for over a year and love it. It also works as a USB and Bluetooth DAC, so you get a nice little 3 in 1 tool.

Over $3,000?!

went to check: ~ 100euros

worth 5 clicks

You and me both: I’ve had the exact same thoughts. I did buy a Sony device (NW-A45), and it’s not quite what I want. It frequently goes into a very slow “creating database” mode when it decides to reindex the SD card. That gets in the way of wanting to quickly add a song or two since I know such changes will induce the long database rebuild.

Not a fan of the proprietary connector either. I misplaced it once and had to order another one. All my other devices use standard cables, of which I have a bunch of each.

If the Sony device was updated to use a standard connector, and the software was given some attention with respect to efficiency and customizable navigation, I’d be pretty happy.

I totally agree on the Android/smartphone OS front. I do NOT want a device that does apps of any form: I just want it to do one thing and do it well.

I've got a sony NW-E393 and it's great. Sounds more in line with what you might be looking for

I am using a FiiO X1 still and love it. FiiOs have great DACs although their software is wanting at times.

My biggest issues with my X1 are: 1) Music Discovery, as my local collection has gotten so large, I often find myself using Jellyfin or local desktop music players to discover, then listen to them on my FiiO 2) Limited Queuing ability. This isn't normally an issue for me, as I usually listen to complete albums all the way through, but if you want to quickly create playlists, the X1 is terrible for that.

But, the sound is fantastic. Controls are simple. I don't get distracted and can just reliably listen to my music. Transfer/management is simple (I use rhythmbox with its usb device support). Battery life is great. Storage is expandable and supports a microSD card (I currently have a 256G, but will probably upgrade to a 512G soon). Supports ogg, flac, mp3, and other formats. Unfortunately it doesn't support opus, although I think newer models do.

I haven't tried any of their newer models as mine is 8 years old and still works perfect.

> The problem I have is that resurrecting old devices like an iPod or a Sansa falls back onto era of proprietary chargers, which I worry about losing and not being able to find replacements.

Personally, I think one great thing about Apple is that because the branding is so strong, it's much easier to find cables for the iPod 30-pin connector than for most other brands.

I am using the xduoo X3ii right now, and that seems to check all of your boxes. It supports Rockbox too!