Chinese tech giant, Huawei, released a couple of devices at the Huawei IFA media communication meeting today. In addition to the Kirin 990 SoC, the company also announced Huawei FreeBuds 3 true wireless headset. This headset use the company’s own custom Kirin A1 chip and supports voice call noise reduction and Bluetooth 5.1.
The Kirin A1 chip allows FreeBuds 3 performance to be 30% higher than Apple’s AirPods. Furthermore, it has 50% lower power consumption, and its package size is 95% of AirPods. Kirin A1 brings a new Bluetooth protocol: BT-UHD.
The Freebuds 3 closely resemble the golf tee style made popular by the AirPods, and also have the same open-air design too, meaning it doesn’t seal inside your ear to keep out the noise from the street, aircraft, or loved ones. Despite this obvious handicap, Huawei has integrated active noise cancellation. Don’t expect complete isolation from the world — the Freebuds 3 will provide a 15-decibel reduction in ambient noise, which Huawei said is all that’s needed in most everyday environments.
If Huawei’s new ear buds are used with a new Huawei phone running EMUI 10.0 or higher, both devices will establish the connection using this new standard. This new standard has a data transfer rate of up to 2.3 Mbps. For reference, the LDAC codec “only” provides 990 kbps.
Other Freebuds 3 features include a better 190ms delay and Qi wireless charging. Each headset has a 30 mAh battery that provides 4 hours of playback on a single charge. In addition, the charging box provides approximately 20 hours of total playback time.
The headset and case charge time is only one hour. Huawei FreeBuds 3 will be available in carbon black and ceramic white colors. As of now, there is no official price for this device.
