With the Pixel Buds, Google has been on the smart headphone market for a number of years, but is still a long way from great success. Of course, that is about to change, and a new technology that has emerged recently could offer interesting alternative ways of operating the earbuds. These have the potential to affect the outer shape of the headphones.
The Google Pixel Buds are now in their third generation on the market and should be a popular accessory for Pixel smartphones. But Google is probably not completely satisfied and hopes for major innovations through intensive research and numerous acquisitions and commitments. One of them could relate to the operation, which has long become a challenge with the ever-shrinking earplugs.
Most smart earplugs can be operated via a touch surface on one or both devices. Often there is the touch and the swipe, which trigger different actions through different directions or a number of taps. Stopping the music, adjusting the volume, taking a call,… you know that. It works very well and you can save yourself having to take your smartphone out of your pocket, but it also creates the need for the largest possible touch surface.
And then two circumstances collide the limited space in the user’s ear and the largest possible space for the precise tap. So far, this has been solved by buds that sometimes seem a bit oversized. But there is also the need for the entire outer surface to be kept free and only sparsely occupied with other components such as microphones. Google’s Skin Touch technology could help.
We have already introduced you to the new technology for the skin touch. The patent filed by Google describes the ability to tap and gesture on the skin NEXT to the device. The headphones are supposed to recognize this through numerous sensors and react accordingly. So instead of tapping on the headphones themselves and between, you could touch yourself in front of the ear in the future.
Not only could that be more convenient if it works reliably, but it also solves the space problem. The earbuds themselves could accommodate a few more items that just don’t currently have room. And if no elements are needed, maybe the device itself could be shrunk a little and made more elegant. Whatever you need it for in the future, technology creates new possibilities.
We can be curious to see whether this will be used in the next Pixel Buds generation, about which nothing is known yet, or whether it will be quickly buried and left in the patent drawer for the time being.