14 DAY TRIAL // LG has just confirmed that the upcoming G6 will feature the Quad DAC, manufactured by ESS. The Quad DAC appears to be very similar to the Digital-to-Analog Converter that was featured on the V20.
LG didn’t reveal many details about the new chip, but it might indeed be the 32-bit ESS SABRE 9218 Quad DAC featured in last year’s V20. The chip allows users to control the volume of right and left channels separately, aside from offering crisp audio capabilities.
It’s designed to convert digital sound signals into audio sound signals and it actually implements four DACs on a single chip for improved performance. Thus, it offers a 50% noise reduction and a distortion rate below 0.0002%.
High-quality audio without interruption
LG’s press release also mentions that the Quad DAC will have a widened path for transmitting sound signals, thus allowing the device to process large and high-quality audio files without interruption. The V20 was actually the first smartphone to support 32-bit Hi-Fi Quad DAC capabilities.
Aside from powerful audio capabilities, the G6 is also rumored to come with a 5.7-inch Full Vision display with 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution and 18:9 aspect ratio. Moreover, it could run last year’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 SoC, simply because Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is said to have dibs on the initial batch of SD835 chipsets for its Galaxy S8 flagship. Had LG waited for SD835 chips to be made available to other manufacturers, the G6 would have launched sometime in May.
Nonetheless, the G6 is also expected to feature IP67 or IP68 protection against dust and water damages and is said to run Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box. There’s also talk about Google Assistant on board and 4GB of RAM, but that will be confirmed during LG’s press conference on February 26 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.