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Home / News / Qualcomm’s latest earphone tech promises ultra-low lag and better in-game chat

Qualcomm’s latest earphone tech promises ultra-low lag and better in-game chat

Qualcomm has announced its latest tech that'll be coming to stacks of wireless headphones this year

Snapdragon Sound

Qualcomm has announced its latest tech that’ll be coming to stacks of wireless headphones this year – intended to make gaming audio even better.

Originally Qualcomm talked about 48ms latency for in-game chat when playing on a smartphone. Now through this latest tech, the platform is capable of less than 20ms.

The chips combine Qualcomm’s own Snapdragon Sound technologies with Bluetooth LE Audio to deliver “ultra-low latency of less than 20ms for lag-free wireless audio with voice back-channel for in-game chat”. The smartphone chip specialist also said that when it was transmitting only the game audio, the latency was further reduced.

We don’t yet have any details of devices the technology will be included in, but as normal with such announcements, compatible devices aren’t usually too far away.

We previously covered the original launch of the S3 Gen 2 during last year’s Snapdragon Summit in November. However, there’s now some additional tech available as part of the platform.

The S3 Gen 2 platform also supports the latest version of Auracast. It’s a broadcast standard again based on Bluetooth LE Audio. Essentially, it means that dongles and adapters with the S3 Gen 2 tech inside can cast from devices like phones and tablets to a wider audience. You could use it to share audio at an event, for example, or getting a public service announcement.

Auracast
Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home