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Android 16’s Priority Modes leaked, and I need them right now

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Android 16's Priority Modes leaked, and I need them right now

On those days when you have a lot of work to do and not nearly enough time to do it, shutting out distractions is vital. Android’s Do Not Disturb mode is already tremendously helpful in that respect, but it looks like a better version is coming in Android 16 called Priority modes.

Android Authority’s Mishaal Rahman first spotted the change in the Android 15 QPR1 Beta 1. According to Rahman, the Priority Mode feature replaces the Do Not Disturb menu and brings with it UI elements and display settings straight from the Digital Wellbeing feature. He played around with the feature, but was unable to interact with it beyond that.

Things have progressed a bit in the most recent version of the beta. The previously inactive Quick Settings tile is now functional and allows you to quickly activate or deactivate different modes. The modes shown include Do Not Disturb, Event, Gardening, Meditating, and Sleeping. Any selected modes are highlighted so you can easily see which ones are active at a glance.

In his analysis, Rahman pointed out that both Event and Sleeping have placeholder icons, but he says he expects a more fleshed-out interface by the time the project is finalized. Android has already introduced more than 40 different icons to choose from in the QPR Beta 2, which suggests that you can set up custom Priority Modes with an icon of your choice.

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This is a massive change that revamps and improves one of Android’s core features. Since it is such a big shift, it will likely be part of Android 16’s feature list, but it is possible it will be released later in Android 15‘s life cycle.

From a user perspective, I love what Priority Modes brings to the table. The ability to customize alerts so that only specific ones come through is basically what exists with Do Not Disturb now, but Priority Modes will make it significantly more convenient to activate. One of the primary obstacles right now is the process of activating Do Not Disturb; why bother going through all those taps when I can just toss my phone in a hoodie pocket and achieve the same effect?

Other reports say that Priority Mode can enable other features, like dimming the wallpaper, turning the screen black-and-white, and much more. I’d rather not admit how often I glance at my phone because of a dynamic wallpaper, so this is a welcome feature.

It’s also worth pointing out that this same update appears to let you place any app into a bubble for easy multitasking and screen management. It all sounds great, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

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What is Elon Musk’s Starship space vehicle?

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Getty Images Starship rocket launching into space with trail of fuel behind itGetty Images

Elon Musk wants his new rocket to revolutionise spaceflight. And that rocket, Starship, is now the largest and most powerful spacecraft ever built.

It’s also designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. His private company SpaceX, which is behind the creation, is hoping to develop a spaceship that can be used more like a plane than a traditional rocket system, being able to land, refuel and take off again a few hours after landing.

When will Starship’s next launch be?

While there’s no exact date set yet for the rocket’s next flight, it could be as soon as this weekend – and SpaceX is expecting big things.

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This will be Starship’s fifth outing, and all eyes will be on the landing phases – specifically, the return of the vehicle’s bottom part, the Super Heavy booster.

So far we’ve only seen what might be called a simulated landing at sea, or ‘splashdown’. This will be the first time we hope to see the booster return to the launch pad.

For a spacecraft to be reusable, it needs to be able to land safely.

The SpaceX founder has said they will try to catch the booster in mid-air on its return to Earth using the giant mechanical arms, or ‘chopsticks’, of the launch tower – or as Musk calls it, “Mechazilla”.

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That’s something that’s never been done before, and eventually SpaceX want to catch the Ship – the top part of the vehicle – in the same way. But that won’t happen on the upcoming test flight.

Will Starship go to Mars?

None of Starship’s missions so far have been crewed, and there’s no plans to put people aboard for the next flight either.

But Musk and his company do have grand designs that the rocket system will one day take humanity to Mars.

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A Mars trip isn’t on the horizon just yet. But the behemoth rocket already has some impressive specs, and dwarfs all of its predecessors.

How big and powerful is Starship?

A side by side comparison of Starship with notable former rocket models, including NASA's Saturn V

Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket system which has ever flown

Starship is a two-stage vehicle. The “Ship” is the uppermost part, and that sits atop a booster called Super Heavy.

Thirty-three engines at the base of this booster produce around 74 meganewtons of thrust. To put that into perspective, it’s almost 700 times as powerful as the thrust generated by the common passenger plane, the Airbus A320neo.

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If you’ve flown with Aer Lingus, British Airways or Lufthansa, imagine the kick of taking off in one of those planes. Then multiply that by 700.

The vehicle has grown about a metre since its second test flight in June of this year, with Starship now measuring just over 120m in total.

This additional height comes from the Super Heavy booster itself being made 1m longer.

A diagram showing Starship being assembled on the launchpad using the launch tower

It’s also about twice as powerful as the Saturn V rocket which first took humanity to the Moon’s surface.

SpaceX says that power should be able to move a payload weighing at least 150 tonnes from the launchpad to low-Earth orbit.

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A visual aid showing Starship resting on the launchpad beside the launch tower, with details of Starship's technical specifications

The mechanical chopsticks of the launch tower are used to lift Starship’s parts into position

Both the Ship and the Super Heavy booster are fuelled with a mixture of icy-cold liquid methane and liquid oxygen fuel, known as methalox.

What has Starship done so far?

Starship has had four test flights up to now. During the first flight, the rocket system exploded early, before the Booster was able to separate.

It’s worth noting that such hiccups are part of SpaceX’s plan to speed up development by launching systems they know are not perfect and learning from the faults.

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And each test has seen real progress – first with a hitch-free separation, and eventually a successful return, where both the Ship and the Booster made a controlled descent and hovered above the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Mexico respectively until splashing down.

Getty Images Fire and smoke hang in the sky after Starship's explosion.Getty Images

Fire and smoke hung in the sky after Starship ultimately exploded after a successful separation during its second outing

How does Starship land?

SpaceX A Super Heavy booster is worked on at Starbase in TexasSpaceX

A Super Heavy booster is worked on at Starbase in Texas

Anyone watching nearby as the booster returns to Earth can expect a thunderous boom as it slows down from supersonic speeds.

While SpaceX plan to catch the booster with the launch tower, we won’t get a similar return of the top part – the Ship – this time. When we do, it shouldn’t look too different from the Super Heavy’s descent.

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But since there’s no launch tower on Mars, or on the Moon for that matter, the Ship also needs to be able to land on its legs.

To do that, it manoeuvres itself horizontally as it starts to descend, in what Musk has called a ‘belly-flop’ manoeuvre. This increases the drag on the vehicle, slowing it down.

SpaceX Starship performing a "belly flop" manuever while falling back to Earth before firing its engines to flip it into the vertical position
SpaceX

Starship “belly flops” back to Earth before firing its engines to flip it into the vertical position

Once the Ship gets close enough to the surface, it’s then slow enough to fire its engines in a way that flips the vehicle into a vertical position.

The Ship then uses its rockets to guide itself down safely and land on a hard pad upon its landing legs.

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All of this has been done by the Ship on its previous flight – apart from landing on a pad. So far it has only landed in the sea.

A 4-panel image showing the Ship part of Starship returning from Earth and being caught by the launch tower's mechanical arms

SpaceX hope to eventually catch the Ship using the arms of the launch tower – but they’ll only try to catch the booster this way on the next test flight

What are the challenges?

One of the purposes of test flying is to highlight problem areas, and the quick turnaround between each test flight means that weak links have to be redesigned at lightning speed.

If you get one thing wrong, the entire internal structure of the rocket could be melted by hot gases.

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SpaceX The "Ship" is stacked on top of the Super Heavy booster. The fins sticking out from the booster help steer it back to Earth.SpaceX

What else will Starship be used for?

There are a few things Starship could be used for soon.

So far Musk has used his own rockets, like the Falcon 9 series, to launch his own commercial satellites, known as Starlink.

Those satellites have a short lifespan of around five years, and the flock in orbit needs to be constantly replenished just to keep the same number of satellites in space.

Getty Images People watch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, as SpaceX launch 49 Starlink satellites on board a Falcon 9 rocket Getty Images

People watch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, as SpaceX launch 49 Starlink satellites on board a Falcon 9 rocket

Nasa also wants to use Starship as part of its Artemis programme, which aims to establish a long-term human presence on the Moon.

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NASA An artistic rendering of Starship on the Moon bearing the USA flag.NASA

NASA has plans to use Starship for a lunar mission in 2026

In the more distant future, Musk wants Starship to make long-haul trips to Mars and back – about a nine month trip each way.

“You could conceivably have five or six people per cabin, if you really wanted to crowd people in. But I think mostly we would expect to see two or three people per cabin, and so nominally about 100 people per flight to Mars,” Musk said.

The idea is to send the Ship part of the vehicle into low-Earth orbit, and “park” it there. It could then be refuelled in orbit by a SpaceX ‘tanker’ – essentially another Ship without the windows – for its onward journey to Mars.

It’s also conceivable that Starship could be used to launch space telescopes.

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The Hubble telescope is about the size of a bus, and the James Webb telescope is almost three times as big as that.

To put up thousands of satellites quickly, or a bigger telescope, you need a big rocket.

Finally, Starship has also been built to carry heavy loads needed to build space stations, and eventually, infrastructure for a human presence on the Moon.

How much greenhouse gas does Starship emit?

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A rocket that kicks 700 times harder than a passenger jet is bound to have some impact on the environment.

A draft environmental report by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released in July shows that the new licence SpaceX is applying for would allow them 25 launches of Starship per year.

The FAA say this would emit a total of 97,342 tonnes of CO2 equivalent – or 3,894 tonnes per launch.

In comparison, a typical car in the US emits about 4.6 tonnes of CO2 per year, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

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If we crunch the numbers, that means one launch of Starship emits as much greenhouse gas as 846 cars would emit over the course of a year.

From a sheer numerical standpoint, that’s fairly insignificant compared to say, the commercial aviation industry.

But with Musk hoping to increase the number of launches to potentially hundreds per year in the future, those numbers could start adding up.



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The FBI secretly created an Ethereum token to investigate crypto fraud

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The FBI secretly created an Ethereum token to investigate crypto fraud

The FBI created a cryptocurrency as part of an investigation into price manipulation in crypto markets, the government revealed on Wednesday. The FBI’s Ethereum-based token, NexFundAI, was created with the help of “cooperating witnesses.”

As a result of the investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged three “market makers” and nine people for allegedly engaging in schemes to boost the prices of certain crypto assets. The Department of Justice charged 18 people and entities for “widespread fraud and manipulation” in crypto markets.

The defendants allegedly made false claims about their tokens and executed so-called “wash trades” to create the impression of an active trading market, prosecutors claim. The three market makers — ZMQuant, CLS Global, and MyTrade — allegedly wash traded or conspired to wash trade on behalf of NexFundAI, an Ethereum-based token they didn’t realize was created by the FBI. 

“What the FBI uncovered in this case is essentially a new twist to old-school financial crime,” Jodi Cohen, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston division, said in a statement. “What we uncovered has resulted in charges against the leadership of four cryptocurrency companies, and four crypto ‘market makers’ and their employees who are accused of spearheading a sophisticated trading scheme that allegedly bilked honest investors out of millions of dollars.”

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Liu Zhou, a “market maker” working with MyTrade MM, allegedly told promoters of NexFundAI that MyTrade MM was better than its competitors because they “control the pump and dump” allowing them to “do inside trading easily.”

An FBI spokesperson told CoinDesk that there was limited trading activity on the coin but didn’t share additional information. On a Wednesday press call, Joshua Levy, the acting US attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said trading on the token was disabled, according to CoinDesk.

The DOJ has reportedly secured $25 million from “fraudulent proceeds” that will be returned to investors.

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TUTORIAL PERAKITAN CLOSE RACK 19 42U DAN 45U DEPTH 1150MM INDORACK

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TUTORIAL PERAKITAN CLOSE RACK 19 42U DAN 45U DEPTH 1150MM INDORACK



Tutorial Perakitan Standing Close Rack 19” INDORACK Type ini dapat diaplikasikan untuk tipe – tipe Rack Server di bawah ini:
IR11542G / 1150mm / 42U / Glass Door
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IR11545P / 1150mm / 42U / Perforated Door

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Is Verizon down again? Live updates on the service outage

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Verizon logo on a building with a blue sky above

It’s only been 10 days since Verizon’s major network outage took out service across the United States, but it seems that the big-red-themed carrier is having yet another service disruption, potentially another major outage.

We’ve been tracking reported outages via Down Detector, which have also been fluctuating over the past 24 hours. However, for about the last hour, dating back to 1PM ET, there has been a steady increase, hitting over 1,500 reported outages. This means that Verizon customers are noticing no connectivity bars, trouble making or receiving calls, and even spotting SOS at the top of their phones. 

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What is Snapdragon Sound? The Bluetooth audio tech explained

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What is Snapdragon Sound? The Bluetooth audio tech explained

So, you’re checking out a pair of headphones online or at your local Best Buy and its got this swooshy red-and-white logo in the description that says “Snapdragon Sound,” and you wonder, “huh, what is that?” Then you see your new Android smartphone has the same logo. The plot thickens. What does it all mean?

In a world where the advanced features of our wireless headphones or earbuds rely on matching capabilities within our smartphones (which the phones may or may not have), Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Sound is an attempt to bring order to the chaos. It’s a promise that things will just work as long as all of your products bear the same Snapdragon Sound logo. Or at least that’s the idea.

But what exactly is Snapdragon Sound, and does it really eliminate compatibility concerns? Let’s dive into everything you need to know.

Codec confusion

Bluetooth Codecs.
Greg Mombert / Digital Trends

Before we get into what Snapdragon Sound is, let’s quickly recap what led to the creation of this brand. It started with Bluetooth audio codecs — the algorithms responsible for transporting audio wirelessly.

Bluetooth audio codecs are at once a brilliant technology, and a royal pain in the butt. Without audio codecs, we wouldn’t be able to use Bluetooth to listen to anything — uncompressed music is just too big to fit inside the limited bandwidth of a Bluetooth connection.

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As long as your phone (or computer or tablet) and your headphones (or earbuds or speaker) are both equipped with the same codec, they’ll work just fine together. If it’s not in both places, it’s like a language that only one device knows how to speak.

Decades ago, at the dawn of Bluetooth audio, this wasn’t an issue. There was just one audio codec —called SBC — and every Bluetooth audio device supported it. They were (and still are) required to support it if they want to participate in the Bluetooth audio ecosystem.

However, SBC is a bare-bones codec. It was born long before smartphones could stream lossless, hi-res audio from anywhere in the world, in a time when highly compressed MP3s ruled the portable audio landscape. If you use SBC to listen to lossless or hi-res audio, a significant amount of detail will be lost.

Over the years, various entities like Sony, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Fraunhofer IIS have steadily introduced new audio codecs, each of which promised improvements over SBC. As of 2024, there are more than 14 of them, and several are designed to preserve far more of the high-quality audio we now have access to.

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With that expansion of the Bluetooth codec universe came compatibility problems. Since Bluetooth audio devices aren’t required to support these better-than-SBC codecs, it has fallen to buyers to check that both of their chosen devices support the same ones.

All about aptX

Headphone box displaying aptX Adaptive logo.
Simon Cohen / Digital Trends

This issue became particularly problematic for companies that chose to use Qualcomm’s family of aptX codecs. There are now five “flavors” of aptX: Classic aptX came first, followed by aptX HD, then aptX Low Latency (aptX LL) and aptX Adaptive. Most recently, Qualcomm added aptX Lossless.

We won’t get into the differences between these aptX flavors here, but if you’re curious, check out our in-depth Qualcomm aptX explainer — it has all of the answers.

Newer aptX-capable headphones and earbuds usually support aptX Adaptive, which is backward-compatible with classic aptX and aptX HD. However, even though all Android phones running Android 8.0 or higher support aptX and aptX HD, aptX Adaptive and aptX Lossless are only available on select Android phones that use Qualcomm’s processors. Some aptX Adaptive products are limited to 48kHz sampling rates, while others can support up to 96kHz.

Meanwhile, aptX Low Latency is incompatible with the antenna structure on phones, so the only way to take advantage of it is via a USB dongle or other third-party device. And aptX HD? You’ll find it on Bluetooth headphones, but only a tiny number of true wireless earbuds provide it, due to reliability issues.

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To make matters even more confusing, Apple has never supported Qualcomm’s aptX family on its iPhones.

The worst part about this codec chaos is that, as a humble buyer of these devices, you may not even realize it when hardware incompatibility has robbed you of the benefits of these new codecs. Since SBC is always present, you’ll still get audio on your chosen headphones. Just not at the level of audio quality you thought you were going to get.

Snapdragon Sound — one brand to rule them all?

Qualcomm Snapdragon Sound logo.
Qualcomm

Qualcomm eventually realized it couldn’t rely on manufacturers and buyers to ensure that aptX-equipped products were being purchased and used in ways that would guarantee compatibility, and thus deliver on the lofty expectations set by the promise of better codecs.

It decided that a single, catchy brand was the answer and created the Snapdragon Sound program. The name strongly suggests that this is yet another codec or technology (kind of like the “Intel Inside” marketing campaign from the 1990s), but it’s not.

Instead, it’s intended to signify when two products will work together reliably and with a certain set of guaranteed features. If you see “Snapdragon Sound” on a set of earbuds and on a smartphone, you can breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that they will “just work.”

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Or at least that’s how it began.

In 2021, when Snapdragon Sound was officially launched, it was with a guarantee of five key features, which had all been tested and certified to work by Qualcomm:

  • AptX Adaptive at 24-bit/48kHz
  • AptX Adaptive at 24-bit/96kHz
  • Low latency mode when gaming
  • AptX Voice (super wideband voice) when on a call
  • Qualcomm Bluetooth High Speed link

These five features meant that your Snapdragon Sound combo would deliver the best possible audio and call quality, with low latency — similar to that of aptX LL — when needed.

The concept, while foreign to buyers who were by now getting used to the idea of scanning specs to find the codecs they wanted, was a good one.

The many flavors of Snapdragon Sound

A Qualcomm Snapdragon Sound logo on the back of a Bose box.
Simon Cohen / Digital Trends

Then things began to change. In early 2022, Qualcomm introduced aptX Lossless, a codec that can deliver bit-perfect CD-quality audio at 16-bit/44.1 kHz — a first for the Bluetooth audio world. AptX Lossless was (and still is) an exclusive feature of Snapdragon Sound, but it’s an optional feature.

In other words, some Snapdragon Sound phones and wireless audio products support aptX Lossless and some don’t. Qualcomm elected to keep the Snapdragon Sound brand unchanged. It didn’t add a version number or a tag to indicate the presence of aptX Lossless, e.g. “Snapdragon Sound Plus” or “Snapdragon Sound 2.0,” which meant that for aptX Lossless, manufacturers and buyers were right back to checking product specs.

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Near the end of 2022, the company announced it was expanding Snapdragon Sound further, with the addition of head-tracked spatial audio, an enhanced version of aptX Lossless that goes up to 48kHz, and improved latency with backchannel voice for in-game experiences.

Once again, it chose to make these optional for Snapdragon Sound participants.

Then, at some point during 2024 — Qualcomm won’t say exactly when — it quietly changed the original five Snapdragon Sound features (the ones that were supposed to be the minimum on any Snapdragon Sound-branded product).

As of the fall of 2024, Snapdragon Sound products must support:

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Either

  • AptX Adaptive at 24-bit/96kHz

Or

Plus:

  • Low Latency Gaming mode
  • Qualcomm High Speed link

The following features are optional add-ons:

  • aptX Voice (super wideband voice)
  • Head-tracked spatial audio
  • Stereo recording

And despite this significant restructuring of mandatory versus optional features, the Snapdragon Sound name and logo have remained the same since they debuted. Qualcomm expects each manufacturer to specify the features their products support.

When, in 2022, it looked like Qualcomm would simply expand the number of features under the Snapdragon Sound brand, there was something of a silver lining. Your new aptX Lossless Snapdragon Sound headphones might not give you aptX Lossless if you used them with an older Snapdragon Sound phone, but they would still be backward compatible with the five previous Snapdragon Sound features.

Unfortunately, in shifting the mandatory features, Qualcomm has degraded that promise of backward compatibility. Take the Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 wireless earbuds as an example. They bear the Snapdragon Sound brand and they feature aptX, aptX Adaptive, and aptX Lossless, however they don’t support aptX Voice.

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Fragmentation frustration

Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones: Earcup/logo close-up.
Simon Cohen / Digital Trends

Today’s Snapdragon Sound landscape looks a lot like the pre-Snapdragon Sound era. If you want to know which features a Snapdragon Sound product offers, you’ll need to pay close attention to the specifications.

Qualcomm’s aptX website remains the only resource that we’re aware of that lists all available Snapdragon Sound products. Its database can be filtered by product type (wireless earbuds, headphones, smartphones, tablets, speakers, and transmitters/receivers) and by aptX flavor (including Snapdragon Sound).

The only problem is that it hasn’t kept pace with the changing Snapdragon Sound feature set. You can see Snapdragon Sound products and those that additionally offer aptX Lossless, but there’s no way to filter by Qualcomm’s newer optional features like spatial audio. Perhaps more importantly, there’s no way to filter for previously mandatory features like aptX Voice.

For a North American audience, the Snapdragon Sound landscape is tricky.

There are now several decent options in both wireless earbuds and wireless headphones, from brands like Sennheiser, Bose, Shure, Denon, and Earfun. Many are priced above $300, but some cost less than $100.

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Smartphones are a different story. As we indicated earlier, there are no Snapdragon Sound iPhones. Google’s Pixel phones aren’t Snapdragon Sound compatible and neither are Samsung’s. The only companies we can find with Snapdragon Sound models are Motorola, Nothing, and Sony.

Elsewhere in the world, the selection is better: Xiaomi, Asus, Sony, ZTE, Vivo, Nubia, Sharp, and BlackShark.

Is it easier to buy wireless audio products now that we have Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Sound program? Perhaps. It’s certainly easier to identify the products that will deliver some of Qualcomm’s aptX benefits, like hi-res or lossless audio.

But as a true it-just-works brand that alleviates us from the need of scouring specifications? Sadly, it’s still very much buyer beware.

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