- Much faster data transfer
- Longer range, lower power consumption
- Many phones don’t have the technology
Samsung’s earbuds could get a big boost to their sound quality and overall performance by using the same tech as the company’s own SmartTags and Apple’s AirTags: UWB.
Ultra wide-band, like Bluetooth, is a short-range wireless technology. It operates in different frequency bands to Bluetooth, it has potentially longer range than Bluetooth and it has exceptionally low latency – sub-milliseconds compared to Bluetooth’s milliseconds.
That’s not all. UWB uses less power, and it can deliver much better data transfer speeds.
So all things considered, it’s the kind of tech you might want to put in a set of earbuds. And Samsung clearly intends to do just that.
What is Samsung doing with UWB earbuds?
For now, it’s just a patent: as 91mobiles reports, the patent is called Wireless Earphones And Control Method Thereof, Computer Equipment And Storage Medium. It was filed in late 2023, but only published this week.
According to the patent, the earbuds would connect to your device over Bluetooth before letting a UWB connection take over. The device would then stream audio over UWB directly to the earbuds in much the same way Bluetooth does in most of today’s best wireless headphones.
The patent suggests data transfer speeds of around 20Mbps, in addition to be very low-latency. While Bluetooth is theoretically capable of this, it doesn’t happen in practice for audio – the maximum known data rate for Bluetooth audio right now is LDAC’s 990kbps. If Samsung’s UWB can actually use this big bandwidth, it’s more than enough for really high-resolution audio – truly lossless sound.
The downside is that while Bluetooth is in everything, UWB isn’t; for example, even the base model Samsung Galaxy S25 doesn’t have it. That means that if Samsung does indeed go ahead with UWB buds in the successor to the Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, it’ll only be of benefit to owners of more expensive smartphones until UWB becomes more widely supported.