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Qualcomm Puts Wi-Fi 6E Inside Its New Audio Chip in Bid to Untether Lossless Earbuds

Qualcomm's Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 is its first audio chip with micro-power Wi-Fi 6E built in, which could let earbuds and audio glasses stream lossless audio over a home network instead of Bluetooth.

AI News Feed · 2026-09-25 09:41

The appeal of that setup is that high-quality lossless audio would keep playing even when the phone paired to the earbuds is left on a bedside charger or buried in a couch, since the audio stream no longer depends on a short-range Bluetooth link to that handset.

The promise is a familiar one. Qualcomm made a similar pitch in 2023, when it introduced the S7 Pro sound platform and its Expanded Personal Area Network, or XPAN, technology, arguing that Wi-Fi earbuds could carry 24-bit 96kHz lossless audio that does not fit inside Bluetooth's limited bandwidth. That 7-series platform, however, required a separate Wi-Fi chip alongside the main audio chip, which appears to have discouraged makers of very small devices from adopting it. Only one product using the approach is known to have appeared: Xiaomi's Buds 5 Pro in 2025, and it did not receive a global release.

Removing the extra chip may change that calculation. Qualcomm says the Elite is 30 percent smaller than the previous generation, consumes up to 40 percent less power and offers twice the AI processing capability. The chip also performs AI processing for what Qualcomm describes as "intelligent hearables," a term the company has applied to earbuds that carry additional sensing and computing functions.

Qualcomm has named several partners for the platform. It says it is working with HP on one specific product that has not yet been identified, is "working closely with Bose," and is "pioneering a new category of intelligent hearables" with Cleer, a description The Verge reads as referring to earbuds with built-in cameras. The report did not include pricing, shipping dates or a full list of devices expected to use the chip.

The technical obstacle Qualcomm is trying to clear is the bandwidth ceiling of Bluetooth, which cannot carry the highest-resolution audio formats without compression. Wi-Fi offers far more capacity, but until now the power draw and physical size of adding a Wi-Fi radio to earbuds stood in the way of products reaching the market at scale.

Whether the integrated approach translates into devices that ship widely remains to be seen. The earlier XPAN effort shows that a chipmaker's capability alone does not guarantee adoption, and the products Qualcomm has discussed with HP, Bose and Cleer are not yet on sale.