It’s official: After months of speculation, OnePlus confirmed via Twitter that it would launch its AirPods competitor on July 21.
Known as the OnePlus Buds, these will be the company’s first true wireless earbuds. In 2019 reviewed OnePlus Bullets Wireless 2.0 – a set of Bluetooth earbuds – in 2019 and found that they are strong performers.
The launch of OnePlus Buds will coincide with the debut of the company’s next smartphone, the OnePlus Nord, which will go through an augmented reality event on July 21.
OnePlus press release stated, “Global mobile technology company OnePlus announced today, it will unveil OnePlus Buds on July 21, the company’s first true wireless earphones.” “OnePlus Buds are designed to deliver high-quality audio playback and a smooth experience on the go, eliminating all wires for a truly free sound experience.”
OnePlus founder and CEO, Pete Lau, said in a statement, “With the new OnePlus Buds, we are advancing our products, providing a cumbersome experience to our users.” “Our users are looking for the right combination of great sound quality, seamless connectivity and an easy to use experience. This is exactly what OnePlus Buds will deliver. “
In a follow-up post on the company’s forum on July 14, Lau elaborated on Buds’ capabilities and features, noting that they would be a “30-hour total” industry-leading “when incorporating batteries in a charging case.” The earbuds reportedly lasted up to seven hours between recharges, which is better than Apple’s AirPods and AirPods Pro (which get five hours), but just shy of the Jabra Elite 75T, which gets 7.5 hours.
According to an interview with Jay Liu, the project manager of OnePlus, posted by TechRadar, the charging case will benefit from OnePlus’ Warp Charge technology. This allows the capacity to charge from 10 hours to 10 minutes after emptying the case. It is much faster than most other charging cases on the market. For example, the AirPods Pro case requires 30 minutes to achieve the same amount of charging capacity.
The warp charge does not affect the time the earbuds will have to be recharged when placed in the case, and this only works when a USB-C cable connected to a 10-watt or more USB charger is used.
In the same interview, Liu confirmed that the charging case was not capable of wireless charging.
Lau said the size of the buds is to give maximum comfort for long-term use, with a half-ear design. We believe this means that they look more like Apple’s AirPods than AirPods Pro, which uses noise-isolation entirely in ear shape.
This design philosophy extends to the weight of OnePlus Buds. At 4.6 grams, each earbud weighs slightly more than the AirPod earbud (4 grams).
As a sign for the OnePlus gaming community, Lau claims that when paired with the OnePlus phone, the buds can be switched to ultra-low-latency Bluetooth mode during gaming. He claims that this will let him know the speed of the wired headphones.
On June 29, the trusted leaker Max J showed a claimed image of the OnePlus Buds, a cross between Apple’s AirPods and Google‘s Pixel Buds.
pic.twitter.com/uzGyPuGd8U
& Mdash; Max J (@MaxJmb) June 29, 2020
Given that Lau has included the image below with his forum post, we say that Max J. Liked it very much.
At this point, we still don’t know how much the OnePlus Buds will cost, although Lau says he thinks OnePlus has succeeded in making the right wireless earbuds that deliver “great performance at a reasonable price” . What we can safely exclude is active noise cancellation (ANC). If OnePlus Buds has this feature, we can’t imagine why Lau hasn’t discussed it yet.
OnePlus has also decided to avoid discussing whether the buds would use touch-sensitive or physical button controls.
We will have complete information about OnePlus Buds as soon as it is launched on 21 July, as well as a comeback on OnePlus Nord.
Updated July 16, 2020: Added details about OnePlus’s War Charge technology.
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