Tomorrow is shaping up to be a pretty busy day for mobile enthusiasts who like to follow every big announcement from the industry's major players, although if you've been keeping an eye on our website these past few weeks, Google and Samsung are unlikely to take you by surprise with their next-gen products.
The Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, and Pixel Watch 2 in particular are essentially as transparent as glass following a cavalcade of incredibly detailed and extremely reliable recent leaks, but that's actually not everything that the search giant is planning to launch on October 4.
The "old" Pixel Buds Pro will soon feel like new
On the software front, Android 14 is widely expected to make its long overdue stable debut (at least on eligible Pixel devices), and then there's an interesting Pixel Buds Pro update that we're hearing about for the very first time today.
Commercially released a little over a year ago, the noise-cancelling earbuds are evidently not due for a hardware upgrade yet, instead looking set to get a couple of additional eye-catching colors and some potentially game-changing new features and capabilities.
These may or may not be announced with great fanfare alongside Google's latest high-end phones, smartwatch, and Android enhancements, but they're almost certainly headed for Pixel Buds Pro owners in the wild on or after Wednesday, October 4.
Already taken for a spin by one of the most prolific and trustworthy TwitterX leakers of Google-related stuff, the add-ons sound like they could make a world of difference for the overall user experience, although some of them are clearly inspired by what the competition for the title of best wireless earbuds out there already offers.
Conversation detection, for instance, is likely to sound familiar to owners of some of the best Galaxy Buds available today, which is obviously not to say that the Pixel Buds Pro will not benefit from the newly integrated functionality.
This should work pretty much exactly as you expect, switching from Active Noise Cancellation to Transparency when automatically detecting "conversation", i.e. when hearing you talking. Of course, you will need to enable the feature first... if you think you're going to find it more useful than annoying.
What else?
Then there's Hearing Wellness, which sounds like it could come in extremely handy for folks worried about loud noises. This feature will warn you whenever you lose yourself in the music and crank up the volume too high... if you want to receive such alerts, of course.
Third on the list of upcoming Pixel Buds Pro improvements, you have something called Bluetooth Super Wideband, which is evidently a fancy new technology designed to make you sound "fuller and clearer" by "doubling the bandwidth for voices." Pretty exciting stuff, eh?
And there's (still) more, with Clear Calling aiming to, well, make your voice calls clearer and crisper by "reducing the noise around the person on the other side of the call" and thus "enhancing their voice."
A new low-latency gaming mode, meanwhile, is... also a pretty self-explanatory add-on, automatically turning on when you start a "compatible" game on a Pixel phone paired with the Pixel Buds Pro to "cut latency in half for a more dynamic gaming experience."
Finally (whew), the Pixel Buds Pro will be made to work better with Chromebooks as part of this looming software update as well, which definitely sounds helpful... for the dozens of people out there who happen to own both these devices. If you're a member of that very exclusive club, you'll probably be happy to hear that a native Pixel Buds app will soon be available for Chromebook users.
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Adrian, a mobile technology enthusiast since the Nokia 3310 era, has been a dynamic presence in the tech journalism field, contributing to Android Authority, Digital Trends, and Pocketnow before joining PhoneArena in 2018. His expertise spans across various platforms, with a particular fondness for the diversity of the Android ecosystem. Despite the challenges of balancing full-time parenthood with his work, Adrian's passion for tech trends, running, and movies keeps him energized. His commitment to mid-range smartphones has led to an eclectic collection of devices, saved from personal bankruptcy by his preference for 'adequate' over 'overpriced'.
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