Apple is reportedly bringing new features to the AirPods in addition to the ones announced at the WWDC this year as a part of iOS 17.
As per
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is exploring new hearing health and body temperature features for the earbuds. They are also expected to have ties with the mixed-reality headset
Vision Pro which comes out early next year.
The hearing health feature, as per Gurman, will play different tones and sounds, which will allow AirPods to understand how well a person’s hearing ability is. “The idea is to help users screen for hearing issues, not unlike how the Apple Watch ECG app checks for heart problems. The hearing test could ‘Sherlock’ — or make irrelevant — existing apps like Mimi,” he added.
He also said that Apple is looking into positioning the AirPods as a hearing aid. They already have features like Conversation Boost and Live Listen but do not have regulatory approval for them yet.
The tech giant is also working on adding sensors to the earbuds to measure the user’s body temperature, which reportedly will be more accurate than the wrist temperature that the Apple Watch 8 Series and Ultra are capable of collecting. “Apple relies on that information for fertility tracking but wants to expand its use to determine if a person has, say, a cold or other illness,” Gurman said.
He said that these features could be “even years away” but some minor upgrades like the shift from the Lighting port to USB type-C could be coming sooner. According to Gurman, Apple is planning the shift for future generations of other audio products as well. Several reports are also suggesting the shift for the upcoming
iPhone 15 models.
At its annual developers' conference, Apple said that the AirPods will be getting a button press feature to mute and unmute on calls, as well as improvements for switching between devices paired to AirPods. It also announced Adaptive Audio for automatically switching between noise cancellation and transparency modes.
