Samsung announces new chips for earbuds providing longer battery life and more flexibility in design

As technology advances, people find it way more comfortable to ditch all cables, especially for headphones. The consumer demand for wireless earbuds is rapidly expanding, sales growing more than 200% from 2018 to 2019. However, there is room for improvement with the battery capacity on True Wireless Stereo devices (TWS), such as the AirPods and Galaxy Buds.

Now, Samsung has announced a possible solution to this problem. Today, the company unveiled a new technology it has developed, called the MUA01 and the MUB01 chips, which are power management integrated circuits (PMICs).

But what does this mean exactly? This new technology actually allows for the chips to be made smaller, which in consequence provides more options for design. Samsung has managed to combine up to ten different components in just one chip and thus save the so-needed space. Some of the components include chips that are responsible for switching chargers (supporting wireless and wired charging in the same chip). The firmware of the chip is also modifiable to support other applications as well.

Another helpful feature that the smaller size of the new chips provides is space for larger batteries with longer battery life, which in consequence gives us longer playback times. The aforementioned chips are used in the Samsung Galaxy Buds+. We can already see this capability in action: the Galaxy Buds+ are said to provide around 11 hours of playback, which is currently the best battery life among all TWS devices, while, in comparison, the AirPods second-generation and the AirPods Pro provide around 5 hours (without the use of their respectable charging cases).

Additionally, Samsung’s new chips provide capabilities for the earbuds to communicate with each other and share important data, for example about charge levels. “Samsung’s industry-first, all-in-one power management solutions optimized for TWS devices will allow manufacturers to craft new applications with greater flexibility.”, Dong-ho Shin, senior VP at Samsung Electronics, said in the announcement.