2016 can be said to be the hottest year in the technology circle. With the popularity and development of smartphones, people are beginning to look at smart products that can better mark the future. That year, TWS headsets, smart watches, smart bracelets, smart glasses, VR head-mounted display devices, intelligent balance vehicles and other intelligent peripheral products began to be hot in the market, but after several years of sand and sand, only TWS headphones, smart watches, bracelets are still retained to become products that people often use. This issue of hardware chronicles will focus on the past and present lives of "TWS headphones" to explain what is a TWS headset and the difference between it and Bluetooth headset.
In 1998, Bluetooth technology came out. The technology was a new wireless communication technology jointly announced by the five major technology companies at the time (Ericsson, Nokia), Toshiba, IBM, and Intel), aiming to liberate the cable transmission mode of small devices and make them wireless and interconnected.
In 2000, entering the millennium, the headset began to have the first "de-cable" of this device, this year, the world's first Bluetooth headset appeared, but it was limited to headsets. At the same time, due to the use of Bluetooth 1.0 technology, the data bandwidth is very limited, can only be used for simple voice calls, and can not achieve the function of music playback.
2001-2010: During this period, due to the poor connectivity of Bluetooth headsets, small bandwidth and other issues, its mainstream form of products appeared in the commercial field, basically used for business calls, but it was still purchased after being scrambled by the white-collar elites of the year. Mainstream products come from Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Nokia and other brands. They all basically use Bluetooth 1.2 technology, the transmission distance is 0-10 meters, and the anti-interference ability is poor.
In 2011, the market began to appear a variety of binaural stereo wireless Bluetooth headphones, to HP's Paladin 1200 as an example, this headset uses the Bluetooth 2.1 technology + EDR standard wireless connection protocol, the advantage is that the built-in Bluetooth module greatly strengthens the adaptability with the mobile phone, while supporting music playback time of about 5 hours, has been similar to the current Bluetooth sports headphones.
The Jabra Stone Bluetooth headset released in the same year is equipped with a wireless portable charger with a headset device box, breaking the visual style of traditional Bluetooth headsets and is the prototype of the current TWS headset charging box.
In 2014, a heavyweight product was released, the world's first true wireless (TWS) concept of headphones - Bragi Dash Headphone, a product from Germany. In this way, we give an explanation of the TWS concept.
TWS Headphones: True Wireless Stereo headphones mean true wireless stereo headphones, and their exterior completely eliminates the way wires are connected, allowing for single-ear wear. According to its working principle, it means that the mobile phone is connected to the main headset, and then the main headset is quickly connected to the secondary headset by wireless means to achieve the true Bluetooth left and right channel wireless separation.
But the early TWS headphones have the problem of the main and secondary ears, I believe that all the small partners have had such an experience, in 2020 before the TWS headset will be in the connection of the Bluetooth display "XX-XX L" This L is the left ear, that is, often as the "main ear" of the headset, in the early era of TWS, the left and right ears are often connected with the main ear and the mobile phone, and then connected to the secondary ear through a low-power Bluetooth transmitter, but also the realization of TWS true wireless technology.
2016 can be called the first year of TWS headphones, because there are two important things that have profoundly affected the development process of the TWS headphone market until today. They were the first release of Bluetooth 5.0 and AirPods.
In June 2016, in the early stage of the outbreak of the TWS headset market, the Bluetooth Technology Alliance launched the Bluetooth 5.0 version, which greatly promoted the maturity of TWS headset technology. The new Bluetooth 5.0 standard far exceeds the previous Bluetooth 4.2 version in terms of transmission capacity, Bluetooth 5.0 has a faster and farther transmission capacity in low-power mode, the transmission rate is 2 times that of Bluetooth 4.2, the effective transmission distance is 4 times that of Bluetooth 4.2, and the packet capacity is 8 times that of Bluetooth 4.2.
At the same time, Bluetooth 5.0 can also be regarded as a new generation of wireless standards tailored for LoT devices, its power consumption is lower than Bluetooth 4.2, and a lot of underlying optimization of the Internet of Things, such as the introduction of Bluetooth mesh network technology, which breaks the "one-to-one" pairing between traditional Bluetooth devices and transforms into a "many-to-many" signal transmission mode. Making it possible to connect binaurally to the phone independently, it has laid an important foundation for the maturity of TWS headphones.
September 8, 2016, was a memorable day for the TWS headset industry. Apple's first true wireless headphones AirPods were officially released, its unique charging box design, small and exquisite shape and exquisite pop-up animation and high price have earned enough eyeballs of global consumers, so that everyone is amazed, Bluetooth headsets can also be like this. AirPods built-in Apple W1 chip, in the Bluetooth connection performance has a strong performance guarantee, its left and right ears using the "monitoring mode", that is, after the main ear is connected to the mobile phone, the secondary ear monitoring in the main ear and the signal of the mobile phone to achieve the "true wireless" mode, which is compared to the early TWS main and secondary ear interconnection technology, in the transmission quality and stability has been greatly improved, which is also apple in the next 2-3 years to dominate the entire TWS headset market reasons.
It can be said that the release of AirPods has educated the entire TWS industry, and at the same time, TWS headphones have really begun to become a phenomenon-level product. In just 5 years, TWS headphones have jumped from 11 million annual shipments to 356 million annual shipments, completing a 30-fold increase in industrial scale, which is a business miracle in the entire digital industry.
A year after the release of Apple's AirPods, various established manufacturers began to enter the TWS headset industry. In September 2017, the world's first true wireless noise reduction headphones were released, it is from Sony's WF-1000X, the headphones adopt in-ear design, and equipped with a number of different sizes of earbuds to assist in wearing, bringing the effect of physical passive shielding noise, built-in Qualcomm CSR8675 Bluetooth chip, in order to achieve the function of active noise reduction, is also the first ANC active noise reduction technology applied to the TWS headphones products, because of this, WF-1000X has also been given the title of "noise reduction beans" Its subsequent products have received widespread attention from the industry.
ANC technology is a relatively mature technology, the principle is: by emitting the opposite of the noise phase, the same frequency, amplitude of the sound wave and noise interference to achieve phase cancellation. It can be understood that in the anime "Dragon Ball" that I watched as a child, two identical turtle qigong waves were fired at each other and finally canceled out in mid-air. The principles of the technology were born in 1936 and commercialized by Bose's engineers in 1978, such as noise-cancelling headphones, aviation X headphones, and TriPort headphones designed for pilots. Around 2000, ANC began to enter the civilian field, and Bose's QC series opened the precedent of civilian active noise cancellation headphones, which continues to this day.
The picture comes from the first generation of bose QC series shared by BOSE Baidu Tieba KAILASH89 users
For the noise-canceling headphones of the TWS platform, the AirPods Pro released in 2019 will definitely push the concept of TWS noise reduction to the cusp of the product, which uses the most advanced composite noise reduction technology at that time, and there is a noise reduction microphone on the outside of the headphone body and the inside of the earbuds, on the one hand, it collects the noise outside the headphones to make the main noise reduction, on the one hand, it collects the noise heard in the ear canal to optimize the noise reduction, which also makes AirPods The Pro became the best TWS noise-cancelling headphones for the noise reduction experience at the time and to this day.
After 2019, the TWS headset market began to usher in a comprehensive outbreak period, and hundreds of brands joined the melee of TWS headsets. Among them, mobile phone manufacturers such as Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, Meizu, Motorola, OPPO, Redmi, Samsung, Sony, vivo, etc. have launched their first true wireless headphone products; well-known audio brands such as Sony, BOSE, Senheiser, Wanderer, JVC, JBL, Jabra, B&O, etc. have launched true wireless headphone products; at the same time, many new brands such as Magic, FIIL, Soundcore, etc. have launched true wireless headphone products; at the same time, many new brands such as Magic, FIIL, Soundcore, etc. have also appeared in the Chinese market. There are also many foundries that carry out self-research brands, such as QCY with excellent cost performance.
Nowadays, the functions of TWS headphones have tended to be perfected, and each product has also made breakthroughs in different aspects of TWS. For example, in terms of TWS sound quality, which has been criticized by people, due to the realization of Bluetooth 5.2 technology, large-bandwidth transmission has become a reality, and TWS headphones can also move towards high sound quality.
For example, the Wanderer NeoBuds noise-canceling Bluetooth headset released in 2020 is the world's first wireless headset to obtain Hi-Res small gold standard certification, using Bluetooth 5.0 Hengxuan BES2300, supporting LHDC, AAC, SBC audio decoding, the bit rate is as high as 900kbps, and it also uses the cavity structure of composite diaphragm + Lou's moving iron, so that the sound quality can be perfected.
Another example is the recently released OPPO Enco X2, which uses software-level tuning to add optimization guidance and polishing from the famous music master Hisaishi Jean, so that the top acoustic system can not only present the details of music, but also convey the delicate emotions in music.
In March 2022, Qualcomm announced the launch of two new ultra-low-power wireless audio platforms, qualcomm S5 QCC517x and Qualcomm S3 QCC307x, both of which support Snapdragon Sound technology, optimized and support dual Bluetooth mode, combining traditional Bluetooth wireless audio and the new LE Audio technology standard. In terms of transmission capacity, these two solutions support 16-bit 44.1kHz CD-class lossless Bluetooth sound quality; 24-bit 96kHz ultra-high-definition Bluetooth sound quality; 24-bit 48KHz hd Bluetooth sound quality, 32kHz ultra-wideband voice, ultra-clear calls; bring stereo recording function to creators, so that the recorded content has a stereo effect.
In addition to high sound quality, there are some TWS headphones to break new paths, in the function of playing a new trick, such as the glory Emeralds 3 Pro released at the 2022MWC conference, through the inherent precision temperature sensor, to achieve the detection of body temperature, glory said that its error is about 0.3 degrees plus or minus, to meet the needs of daily epidemic prevention.
There are also some TWS headphones that have been optimized in form, such as SONY's linkbuds launched in February 2022, which uses an open playback unit, which makes it very suitable for users who pay attention to ear health.
As well as the development of personalized sound quality, such as the "Hear ID" developed by the Sound Broad team and the "Personalized Hearing" developed by OPPO and sony's "360 Reality Audio", etc., users can better adapt to their own hearing when using headphones and obtain better sound quality performance.
From the development of Bluetooth headsets in just over 20 years, we have witnessed the great progress of human scientific and technological development, so that Bluetooth headsets from the original positioning of business, huge shape to today's small and easy to ear form. From the original can only answer the phone, now you can listen to "lossless" level of music. From the original endurance of just 1 hour, to now with the charging box can be used even if the noise reduction is turned on, it can last more than 20 hours. Such changes bring great convenience to our lives, so that music is no longer bound by cables, so that sound quality is no longer exclusive to wired headphones, so that noise reduction brings us a quiet listening environment.