Longer Battery Life For Wireless Earbuds A Possibility With Qualcomm's New Chip

Qualcomm has announced a new chipset that the company claims will vastly improve wireless earbuds and solve the device’s biggest problem. Called the QCC5100, the new Qualcomm SoC (system-on-chip) will be able to deliver three times the battery life of future wireless earbuds.

“This breakthrough single-chip solution is designed to dramatically reduce power consumption and offers enhanced processing capabilities to help our customers build new life-enhancing, feature-rich devices,” Qualcomm senior vice president Anthony Murray said. “This will open new possibilities for extended-use hearable applications including virtual assistants, augmented hearing and enhanced listening”

The Qualcomm QCC5100 series chipset will be made available to makers of truly wireless earbuds soon. It comes with its own dedicated application processor sub-system, dual DSP architecture and next-gen ADK software. This allows wireless earbuds makers to add more features on top of just listening to music. Manufacturers could create new wireless earbuds that have biometric sensors, built-in microphones and support for digital assistants like Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa.

As for sound quality, the Qualcomm QCC5100 comes with integrated hybrid Active Noise Cancellation (ANC). This means that manufacturers won’t have to worry about placing a separate ANC chip in their wireless earbuds. This would also allow manufacturers to come up with smaller earbuds. The QCC5100 also supports aptX and aptX HD audio technologies that allow high-quality audio streaming over Bluetooth.

“Without sacrificing our superior sound quality, we can now help to pack tremendous functionality into small, wireless hearable devices. Audio designers are looking for a platform solution that brings an ideal combination of power, size and functionality and user experience – and the QCC5100 series is designed to deliver exactly that,” Murray said.

Speaking of Bluetooth, the QC5100 chip supports Bluetooth 5.0 and 2Mbps Bluetooth Low Energy. This enables truly wireless earbuds to have extended battery life. Qualcomm claims that its new chip reduces power consumption by up to 65 percent for both voice calls and music streaming when compared to previous single-chip Bluetooth audio solutions.

Qualcomm also said that wireless headphones that have the QCC5100 could offer 25 percent battery battery life than “the most popular true wireless headset on the market today,” according to The Verge. The most popular wireless earbuds right now is Apple’s AirPods, which is able to offer 4-6 hours of battery life. If Qualcomm’s claim is accurate, wireless earbuds powered by the QCC5100 would be able to offer 6-8 hours of battery life.

Qualcomm hasn’t announced which manufacturers will be getting their hands on the QCC5100 first, but the new chip is planned to be available to manufacturers sometime during the first half of 2018. Consumers should expect wireless earbuds/headphones with the QCC5100 chip to start popping up in the middle of 2018.