I ditched music on my Android phone and went back to my iPod

As an old-school techie whose formative years were spent tinkering with tape decks and portable CD players, I find that modern Android phones are nothing short of miracles of engineering for audio consumption. They’ve got a screen that rivals my high-end television, a DAC chip that is by all measures transparent, near-lossless wireless streaming, more storage than you can shake a stick at, and enough processing power to run a small datacenter.

Yet, when I want to sit down and actually listen to an album, the phone is often the most frustrating tool in my pocket. Between the constant pings from Slack and the AI-generated discovery feeds that keep trying to shove viral tracks down my throat, the simple act of listening has become a chore. It shouldn’t have been this way. A fully connected device like the phone in your pocket, with access to practically every track in existence, should offer the best listening experience. But, in practice, it’s just not true.

That frustration is why, despite having access to the best Android phones and iPhones around, I still turn to a gaggle of iPods for my music listening. It turns out that in 2026, the best way to enjoy music is to travel back to 2006. While everyone else is fighting with subscription price hikes and discovery algorithms, I have found sanctuary in a device that doesn’t even have a Wi-Fi chip. And if the growing shift back to retro tech in general, and iPods in particular, is anything to go by, I’m far from alone in this shift.

Let’s be honest about the current state of music apps on Android today. Whether you use Spotify, YouTube Music, or Tidal, the experience is no longer just about your library. The enshittification of all these apps has been proceeding at a slow but steady pace. Every time I open YouTube Music, I am greeted by a “Samples” tab that looks suspiciously like TikTok. AI DJs interrupt my flow to tell me what they think I want to hear based on current trends. The app provides a noisy, cluttered experience that prioritizes engagement metrics over the actual art of the song. There’s also the cyclical movement of playlists, especially on Spotify, which seems to surface the same popular tracks every single time. Discovery is basically dead unless you actually put the time into actively perusing sources like AllMusic for the latest releases or reading music reviews online.

The distractions go beyond the apps themselves. Most of our listening today happens on a phone, which, yes, is extremely convenient. You can listen at home, listen on the go, and, to a fair degree, listen offline. But when you are trying to lose yourself in a complex progressive rock album or a classic swing jazz recording, a notification about a LinkedIn connection request is most definitely a vibe killer.

Even in “Do Not Disturb” mode, the temptation to check a notification or scroll through a feed is always there because every time you’re adjusting your playlist, that notification is right there. Could I exercise more self-restraint? Perhaps. But my phone certainly doesn’t make it easy. Moving my music to a dedicated device, however, solved this instantly. When I hold my iPod, I am doing one thing and one thing only. I am listening. Which, if you take your music seriously, is the most important thing.

Smartphone-driven anxiety isn’t a rare phenomenon. I suffer from it too. We are constantly reachable, constantly updated, and constantly “on.” At night, before I finally turn off the lights and go to sleep, I’m still checking the news, social feeds, my email, and my internal and external Slack groups. Using a smartphone as a primary music player means you are tethered to that world.

The iPod offers a sanctuary. It doesn’t know where you are or what you are doing. It just holds your music and plays it back. This lack of connectivity is its greatest feature. It creates a hard boundary between your digital life and your leisure time. When I go for a walk with the iPod, I am truly disconnected. If someone needs me, they can wait 30 minutes. That level of peace is increasingly hard to find in the modern tech ecosystem. Trust me, it hasn’t been easy to break away from the phone. I still find myself reaching for a phantom notification at times. But that just reinforces why I use an iPod and vinyl for most of my music listening, and switch over to an audio streamer and self-hosted music server when I crave modern convenience.

We have spent the last decade perfecting the haptic engine — the Taptic Engine if you’re on an iPhone — but a vibration motor under a glass sheet will never beat the tactile perfection of the iPod click wheel. In 2026, we are surrounded by flat, fingerprint-prone rectangles that offer no give at all. There is something immensely satisfying about the physical “click” of a button. It provides a level of feedback that a touchscreen simply cannot replicate.

The biggest advantage here is blind control. I can reach into my pocket and skip a track, play, or pause without ever looking at a screen. On my Android phone, I have to wake the device, potentially bypass a lock screen, and hunt for a software button. Even with always-on displays and media controls, the friction is higher. The iPod was designed from the ground up for one-handed, sightless navigation. It remains a masterclass in usage-led industrial design that feels more relevant now than it did 20 years ago. Of course, I could write paeans to the beauty of the Dieter Rams-inspired industrial design of the hardware itself, but I digress. Almost 25 years on, this is a device that, in typical Apple fashion, just works.

Modern flagship phones have incredible battery life, but they are also doing incredible amounts of work. Between 120Hz refresh rates, 5G modems, and heavy background processing, your phone is always fighting a losing battle against battery life, even in a world of 9,000mAh battery-equipped phones. Even if you aren’t actively looking at your phone, the device is searching for signals, pinging towers, and managing background data. Playing high-resolution audio over a Bluetooth connection or streaming via Wi-Fi drains that battery even faster.

My iPod tells a different story. The original iPod claimed and provided a full 20 hours of listening. My fully refreshed iPod offers a magnitude higher. Since I replaced the original spinning hard drive with a microSD adapter, there are no moving parts and significantly less power draw. I am currently running 512GB of storage paired with a significantly larger battery that lasts weeks, not hours. I can go on a week-long trip and never think about a charger. Because the device isn’t hunting for a 5G signal or refreshing a social media feed, the energy efficiency is staggering. The iPod has no GPS to track your movement. It has no microphone to listen for “Hey Google” commands. It is a dedicated tool that does one job and does it for a very long time.

The economics of music listening in 2026 is frustrating, to say the least. I’ve lost count of the number of times Spotify has increased its subscription fee. While subscription prices continue to climb, lossless tiers often come with an even higher premium. We are, obviously, just renting our music and paying through the nose for that privilege. If you stop paying your monthly fee, your entire library vanishes.

If a licensing deal falls through, your favorite album might disappear from the platform overnight. This possibility isn’t an “if,” but a “when.” Even changing political stances can mean that your favorite artist might pull their discography from the platform. Switching between platforms isn’t easy either, and it boils down to paying for external services to plug into your accounts and hoping that all your playlists get transferred through.

There is also the question of audio quality. While Spotify finally rolled out its “Hi-Fi” tier, the cost is astronomical compared to a standard plan. On an iPod, I can load up high-resolution files that I own. I bought them on Bandcamp, ripped them from CDs and records, or downloaded them from digital stores. I own these files. Nobody can decide to take them away from me. In many cases, this includes live recordings, B-sides, and even leaked demo tracks that no commercial streaming service hosts. I am not paying a monthly tax to access my own taste. For the cost of one year of a music subscription, you can buy a used iPod and enough storage to hold thousands of high-quality tracks forever.

Which brings me back to my earlier point. We have become passive consumers of music. We open an app, hit “Recommended for You,” and let the algorithm decide our mood. This has led to a cultural shift where music has become background noise rather than a primary focus. Heck, popular music is being designed to be shorter just to accommodate the attention span of a viral Instagram reel hook. We don’t listen to albums anymore; we listen to vibes, and call me old-school, but that isn’t for me.

The iPod, for better or worse, forces you to be your own music curator. You have to manually manage your library. You have to decide which albums are worth the storage space. This intentionality changes how you listen. When you have to choose to put an album on your device, you are more likely to actually listen to it from start to finish. You begin to appreciate the sequencing of tracks and the artist’s intent. If you don’t like it, you don’t just immediately switch over to the next track. You remember that this was an artist who didn’t vibe with you, and you’ll remove the record from your rotation. There’s learning in that. The iPod doesn’t care about what’s trending on social media. It only cares about what you have decided is important enough to listen to. It turns music back into an active hobby rather than a passive background listening experience. I’m not one to take a moral high ground, but as an amateur musician, that speaks to me deeply.

I’ll keep it simple. No, it’s not. If you thrive on discovering new artists every single day, the iPod isn’t going to work out for you. If you rely on smart speakers and a seamless multi-room audio ecosystem, there are ways to shoehorn an iPod into the system, but it’s a hack job and an additional expense that most wouldn’t bother with.

However, there is a growing group of people who are exhausted by the do-it-all nature of modern smartphones. And ironically, this transition back to an analog or more intentional existence is being led by the very people who grew up in a smartphone-native environment. If you find yourself scrolling through Instagram while you are supposed to be enjoying a new record, or if you are tired of your music being interrupted by advertisements and notifications, a dedicated player is the answer. It is for the person who values quality over quantity.

As for me, going back to the iPod wasn’t just about nostalgia, though that certainly played a role. It was a practical decision, amongst many others, to be more in the moment. Between using Focus Modes and the Do Not Disturb mode on my Android phone, to shooting more film, collecting more vinyl, and listening to music via an iPod, it’s all part of a concerted effort to be more in the moment. My Android phone is still the best tool for navigation, communication, and even everyday photography. It just isn’t the best tool for the tasks I enjoy the most anymore. And music listening ranks high up in that list.