In recent years, thanks to the rapid development of Bluetooth audio technology in smart phones, as well as the substantial progress of Bluetooth audio chips in terms of process and computing power, TWS earphones of mainstream manufacturers have generally solved the bottleneck problem of wireless transmission for sound quality, and at the same time, there has been significant progress in active noise reduction indicators.
Earlier this year, MWC24 showcased TWS earphones with the latest built-in main controller
On this basis, some relatively more creative products will also more fully tap the computing power of those latest audio platforms, and add additional functional highlights to the TWS earbuds. For example, real-time dialogue translation that can be used offline, and even an infrared thermometer or heart rate sensor can be built into the earphone cavity to achieve ear temperature measurement, sports heart rate tracking and other selling points.
Almost all TWS earbuds do not involve the charging case in their "creative design" (the picture shows the JVC FW1000T using a wooden diaphragm)
However, I don't know if you realize that almost all of the improvements in the functionality of these TWS earphones have occurred on the "earphone side". But in fact, in addition to the earbuds themselves, mainstream TWS earbuds will also have a "charging case" part. Isn't it possible that on the charging case, TWS earphones can't make more creative functional designs?
The answer, of course, is no. First of all, in terms of product form, the charging case should not only be able to store the earbuds, but also serve as a "backup power supply" for the earphones, so its size and internal space must be much larger than the TWS earphones themselves, and there is also destined to be a battery several times the capacity of the earphones themselves.
As a result, some manufacturers with ideas will make full use of this space and large capacity to add other functional components that need to consume power to the charging case.
For example, many of LG's "Tone Free" TWS earbuds have ultraviolet lamps added to the inside of the charging case. It can automatically activate for a period of time after the user puts the earbuds into the charging case and closes the lid to disinfect and sterilize the earbuds.
JBL's charging case with screen idea is good, but there are also a lot of copycat products
For example, on some TWS earphones of JBL, it also cleverly takes advantage of the large size and large battery of the charging case, and also gives full play to the contact communication mechanism between the charging case and the earbuds, realizing the ingenious design of directly monitoring and controlling the status of the earbuds on the touch screen of the charging case.
Of course, in the above two examples, the additional functions added by the relevant manufacturers to the charging case are relatively simple, and they do not affect the more core experience such as the listening experience and connection method of the earbuds. But if you think a little more broadly and think about it in combination with the latest technology trends on the market, you will find that the "possibility of charging case" is far more than that.
Both Nubia and Sony have launched TWS earbuds with separate encoders, but neither of them has been able to integrate them inside the charging case
At present, there is news that some manufacturers intend to integrate the functions of Bluetooth audio encoders into the charging case. In this way, as long as the user connects the charging case with a USB or AUX (that is, 3.5mm audio cable) cable to a player that does not originally support Bluetooth function, the charging case can "convert" the wired audio signal to wireless and then transmit it to the earbuds.
In this way, this design allows TWS earphones to adapt to devices such as game consoles and aircraft entertainment systems, which originally did not consider Bluetooth compatibility, thereby expanding the use scenarios of TWS earphones.
For example, if you further expand along this line, then it seems that there is no technical difficulty at all to integrate the HiFi decoder and Bluetooth encoder in the charging case.
A sample of Qualcomm's WiFi TWS earphones on display during MWC24
You must know that with the increasing bandwidth of the Bluetooth audio protocol and the emergence of some wireless earphone connection technologies that surpass Bluetooth, the traditional TWS earphones are actually facing more and more insurmountable sound quality bottlenecks. These bottlenecks are not in the headphones' speakers or wireless transmission protocols, but in the processing circuitry built into the headphones.
Both AKM and ESS have introduced new low-power small HiFi DACs, but no matter how small they are, they can't fit into the cavity of TWS earphones
After all, due to the constraints of the size of the fuselage, even though the main control of TWS earphones has made great progress in computing power in recent years, their objective audio indicators are actually difficult to make high enough. Even when compared with low-power HiFi DACs (such as AK4493S and ESS9039Q2M) at the mobile specialization level, these overly integrated headphone controllers are often far from "enough" in terms of audio performance.
In this way, if these DACs that have been proven to sound quality are stuffed into the charging case of TWS earphones, and then combined with the Bluetooth transmission function mentioned earlier, which has been implemented by some products, will it bring about another major improvement in the sound quality of TWS earphones?
The Bluetooth tail is nothing new, but why can't it be combined more deeply with headphones
I have to say that this obviously has a certain possibility, because the "Bluetooth little tail" with a similar concept has already been launched. It's just that such products usually exist in a separate "box" form, and are not functionally directly integrated with wireless headphones. But who's to say that they won't spark in the future and add another bit of interest to the form of wireless HiFi products?
[The picture in this article comes from the Internet]