Aside from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile SoC and the Snapdragon X Elite chipset for laptops, at its Snapdragon Summit today in Hawaii Qualcomm also took the wraps off its latest audio chips that will power future TWS earbuds, headphones, and speakers.
Meet the Qualcomm Snapdragon S7 and S7 Pro Gen 1 Sound platforms with Bluetooth 5.4. The S7 Pro brings micro-power Wi-Fi (capable of speeds up to 29 Mbps) to your next pair of earbuds in order to extend their range “far beyond what is possible today using only Bluetooth”, Qualcomm says, with seamless transitioning between Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
The company promises you’ll be able to walk around your home, any building or campus, while still listening to music and making calls, where mere Bluetooth functionality would have reached its limits.
The S7 and S7 Pro deliver “six times the compute power, almost 100 times the AI power” (thanks to the use of a dedicated Micro NPU AI engine) of “previous generation platforms”, aka the S5 Gen 2. Hopefully you weren’t banking on being able to escape AI in future headphones and speakers and earbuds.
These two audio platforms “utilize and unparalleled level of on-device AI”, according to Qualcomm, which will help “hearing enhancement technologies deliver a more seamless user experience by understanding and adapting to user needs throughout the day”.
Translation: automatic transitioning between ANC modes “based on immediate environment”, which is something that already exists in earbuds, so hopefully this just means it’s better. Speaking of ANC, it’s “4th Gen” now, and should be better than ever.
There are “multiple DSP cores” on board and a sensor hub, supported by a 300% increase in memory – again compared to the S5 Gen 2. The S7 Pro also has support for 192kHz multi-channel lossless music streaming and enhanced multi-channel spatial audio for gaming.
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