Roger Fingas
At this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Sony announced the Xperia Ear Duo, a new pair of all-wireless earbuds compatible with Apple's Siri voice assistant, as well as Google Assistant.
An upgrade of the Xperia Ear, the Duo uses new "Spacial Acoustic Conductor" technology to let people hear music and ambient sound simultaneously. Since this is deeply interwoven with the product's design, however, wearers can't shut out environmental audio.
Tap gestures are used to trigger voice assistants or control music feedback, and people can even nod or shake their head to respond to incoming phone calls.
Battery-wise the earbuds should last four hours on their own, but as with Apple's AirPods — and some other wireless earbuds — they come with a charging case for refueling. The case provides up to three more charges.
Sony is currently planning to launch the the Xperia Ear Duo in May at a cost of $279.99. Preorders should begin shortly on Amazon.
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23 Comments
Here is an image of them on a person:
It it seems to defy physics! It looks it is secured by the earbuds only. I’m not knocking though. If it stays secure that way, great.
This ambient noise feature is weird though. It’s basically what every earbud does, so, what is the improvement here?
No way.
I rather buy 2 AirPods!
Much larger, much uglier, and much more expensive. Good work!
bigger, looks more uncomfortable, costs more, and since not native Apple I doubt it works as well as airpods do...not seeing any advantage unless you are just anti-Apple in which case you wouldn't have an iPhone to begin with.
Always the Apple killers. Oh, and AAPL is now at pre-correction highs. Go figure.