Samsung wants to take on Apple at every turn, and now that Apple has launched a great pair of portable headphones — the AirPods — it seems as though Samsung wants to compete. How? By upping the ante with its own wireless earbuds, of course.
We already knew that Samsung was preparing its own set of next-gen wireless earbuds to launch alongside the Galaxy S8, which are expected to be true wireless buds, just like Apple’s AirPods. But now it seems like the company will offer a pair of wireless earbuds with active noise cancellation, too, according to Twitter leaker Roland Quandt.
According to Quandt, the noise cancelling headphones will be available in a color choice of red, green, black, or silver. They’ll reportedly be priced at around 130 euros, which equates to around $140. At that price, the headphones will hopefully offer at least a decent audio quality, however we won’t know for sure until they’re launched for real.
We’re not sure at this point that the new noise cancellation earbuds would be true wireless earbuds, like Apples AirPods, but if so that would be a first for the genre as far as we’re aware. If, however, they’re tethered wireless earbuds, they would be a little less special — but still a nice offering to go alongside the Galaxy S8.
Samsung first had a go at completely wireless earbuds with the Gear IconX earbuds, and while they were pretty nice, they weren’t perfect. According to SamMobile, Samsung is shooting for perfection with a new pair. Of course, the firm will probably settle for simply offering a better product that can compete with Apple.
It’s likely that the new earbuds will focus on a few key points — most likely including battery life. While the IconX headphones offered decent battery life, they generally didn’t last for more than a couple of hours per charge, if not less. In comparison, Apple’s AirPods offer up to fiver hours of playback time per charge, alongside a charging case that can give them as much as 24 hours of playback. On top of that, Samsung’s effort suffered from connectivity problems, and provided only average audio quality.
Rumors originally hinted at a removal of the headphone jack on the Galaxy S8, which would make wireless earbuds even more important, however recent reports are now suggesting that instead, the headphone jack will remain on the device.
Updated on 01-30-2017 by Christian de Looper: Clarified that we don’t yet know if the earbuds will be true wireless or simply wireless earbuds.
