Apple Seemingly Preparing for Devices With Bluetooth 5.2, Which Could Hint at AirPods Pro With LE Audio
Apple appears to be preparing for future devices with Bluetooth 5.2 support, according to a filing in the Bluetooth SIG products database earlier this month. Among other possibilities, this could serve as evidence of future AirPods Pro with LE Audio support.
Apple's filing references a Bluetooth 5.3 host subsystem that is likely intended for future products. However, in actuality, the filing likely refers to Bluetooth 5.2, as the Bluetooth versions listed in Apple's filings in the database are often one version number higher than the version that ends up being supported on a device, for reasons unclear.
For example, the Beats Studio Buds are listed with Bluetooth 5.3 when they actually support Bluetooth 5.2, according to reviews of the headphones, while many iPhone and iPad models are listed with Bluetooth 5.1 despite supporting Bluetooth 5.0.
With all of that confusion surrounding version numbers aside, Apple adopting Bluetooth 5.2 would be especially beneficial for AirPods, as the specification includes support for LE Audio with several improvements to wireless audio streaming.
LE Audio is part of the low-energy Bluetooth LE standard. According to The Verge, benefits of LE Audio for wireless headphones like AirPods could include improved audio quality, longer battery life, the ability to connect more than two pairs of AirPods to a single iPhone, and the ability for each individual left and right AirPod to have its own Bluetooth connection to an iPhone to prevent desynchronization during audio playback.
In July, the Bluetooth SIG said it anticipates availability of products with support for LE Audio to ramp up by the end of 2022. Apple is expected to launch second-generation AirPods Pro by the end of the year, but it remains to be seen if they support Bluetooth 5.2 or LE Audio. It also remains to be seen if Apple would add LE Audio support to the Beats Studio Buds with a firmware update given those earbuds already support Bluetooth 5.2.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Top Rated Comments
I've got a pair, and while they're great they don't support lossless audio (launched after the headphones), they need to migrate to usb c, and they need to get better at switching between devices if you've got a lot of them. At times they just get non-responsive and need to be reset since they won't connect to anything.
And they need a better case,
Can't wait for the vanilla iPad to lose it's jack and I gotta start doing this crap with it too.
I was disappointed that the M2 Air doesn’t came with Bluetooth 5.2.