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Wireless services and semiconductors giant Qualcomm knows how to facilitate a better Bluetooth experience and then get out of the way. And its latest idea is to bring the best and newest perks within Bluetooth 5.2, LE Audio, and Auracast to the source device you use for gaming.
Guy Campbell, Staff Manager and Product Marketing at Qualcomm, unveiled the new concept USB-dongle in London UK (June 21), to join the company’s S3 Gen 2 Snapdragon Sound platform family. And this new member of the clan is optimized – as all S3 products are – for a specific use case. Here, it’s all about getting ultra-low-lag audio in gaming.
What exactly can it do? Well, first we need to understand Snapdragon Sound, which Campbell calls « a coming together of Qualcomm’s best technologies within a single product ». So, it’s a standard: if a product can pass Qualcomm’s strict KPI testing, it may qualify for the Snapdragon Sound badge – but it’s a big ask. Snapdragon Sound has been around for nearly three years and currently, around 100+ devices have actually made the cut.
Enter then, Qualcomm’s dongle idea. This would level up any source device that can host USB audio with Snapdragon Sound. That could be a smartphone, car, console, laptop, PC, or even an in-flight aircraft entertainment system (such as Panasonic’s latest Astrova OLED progeny) so that suddenly, it’ll work with your LE Audio-enabled earbuds or wireless headset to deliver Auracast audio announcements and never-heard-til-now latency when gaming.
And that’s a big deal, considering 58% of users surveyed by Qualcomm recently expressed a strong interest in hi-res audio streaming, 79% said lower audio lag in gaming would be a purchase driver for a new set of wireless earbuds, and 70% want more robust connectivity from their listening gear.
