Range anxiety for Bluetooth wireless earbuds might be a thing of the past soon.
Xiaomi released its WiFi-connected earbuds earlier this year. Qualcomm promises we should see more buds with this technology soon enough., I mean that literally). But in the comfort of your own home when you’re trying to unwind and escape your phone with your favorite music, needing to stay in Bluetooth range for yourcan be a little annoying.
Qualcomm’s audio engineers are trying to solve that issue by seamlessly switching to Wi-Fi if you travel away from your audio source. Sure, that sounds neat, but the tech implies a future where you won’t even need any other device nearby to listen to your favorite tunes on your I can already hear the whining in the comments. The problem this feature hopes to fix is a very niche use case, but it’s one that could end up in many next-gen wireless earbuds in the near future. I tested out this feature at Snapdragon Summer in Hawaii , dubbed XPAN for “Expanded Personal Area Network,” with a pair of nonspecific reference wireless earbuds used by Qualcomm. With the feature enabled, the buds work with the phone to detect if the device is in Bluetooth range. If you start walking away, they will automatically switch over to Wi-Fi.In many ways, the tech is far more interesting than the end result. The wireless earbuds contained a Wi-Fi antenna, though neither the case nor the buds looked much different from what I’ve used in the past. I walked 30 feet away from the phone and back, and I didn’t notice any interruptions in the song playing. The phone showed how it was swapping from a P2P connection through various other connection types. A Bluetooth 5.3 connection range is technically close to 33 feet. While that means you won’t lose connection walking from one end of the room to the other, intervening walls or—in my case—a crowd of bodies could interrupt that signal. XPAN merely expands the range to encompass everywhere there’s a Wi-Fi signal. Although wireless earbuds with the technology will be limited to local Wi-Fi, the technology could potentially allow you to listen to your device from “anywhere in the world” through a Wi-Fi access point. Dino Bekis, Qualcomm’s general manager of connectivity, told me in a Q&A that there’s no issue with latency on a Wi-Fi connection compared to Bluetooth. Modern wireless earbuds are already so damn good at cutting down on latency even when streaming high-bitrate lossless audio. Wi-Fi networks should be able to handle the 96kHz speeds necessary for lossless. It shouldn’t matter if you’re still using “Today, with XPAN, it’s 96kHz 24-bit, but we see that evolving to 192kHz to be truly lossless,” Bekis said.released earlier this year. They support the 96kHz standard, though Bekis promised we should see more wireless earbuds soon enough with current or future S7 chips. Audiophiles would still extol the benefits of lossless and minimum latency. Regular folk who just want to listen to their tunes simply care that they need to be within close range of their paired music source. Still, the feature may end up being more useful for taking calls with your wireless earbuds than for listening to music. Inevitably, it seems our wireless earbuds will become as connected as our phones are today. What that means for music listeners is a future where we connect to Spotify or Apple Music right from our wireless earbuds’ or headphones’ case, rather than needing to go through a phone. I don’t think we’ll need to wait long to see more wireless earbuds cases with screens used to control music. Hell, if you were longing for a device as dedicated to music as your old iPod, a Wi-Fi-enabled pair of wireless earbuds could fit the bill. You’ll still have to pay your tithe to your favorite music streaming app, of course.PlayStation’s New Portable Gaming Speakers Could Be Really Good, If They Don’t Cost a Fortune The Pulse Elevate sound like a cash grab, but Sony actually knows how to make solid audio and gaming products.Kyle BarrQualcomm’s New Android Chip Could Leave the iPhone 17 Pro in Its Dust for Gaming Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will be powering many flagship Android phones next year, and it has a few surprises beyond its silly name.
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