Range anxiety for Bluetooth wireless earbuds might be a thing of the past soon.
Your phone is usually attached to your hip (in terms of the recent iPhone 17’s Crossbody Strap, I mean that literally). But in the comfort of your own home when you’re trying to unwind and escape your phone with your favorite music, needing to stay in Bluetooth range for your headphones and wireless earbuds can be a little annoying. Qualcomm’s audio engineers are trying to solve that issue by seamlessly switching to Wi-Fi if you travel away from your audio source. Sure, that sounds neat, but the tech implies a future where you won’t even need any other device nearby to listen to your favorite tunes on your AirPods.
I can already hear the whining in the comments. The problem this feature hopes to fix is a very niche use case, but it’s one that could end up in many next-gen wireless earbuds in the near future. I tested out this feature at Snapdragon Summer in Hawaii (full disclosure: travel and lodging were paid by Qualcomm, and Gizmodo did not guarantee any coverage as a condition of accepting the trip), dubbed XPAN for “Expanded Personal Area Network,” with a pair of nonspecific reference wireless earbuds used by Qualcomm. With the feature enabled, the buds work with the phone to detect if the device is in Bluetooth range. If you start walking away, they will automatically switch over to Wi-Fi.
