- An APK teardown of the Samsung Members app has revealed pinch sensors for the Galaxy Buds 3 series.
- This suggests that the new earbuds could offer pinch and squeeze gestures in lieu of touch controls.
- Apple, Nothing, Xiaomi, and several other earbud brands offer pinch functionality today.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
How Galaxy Buds 3 could use pinch and squeeze gestures
These brands all generally offer the same basic controls, namely pinching once to pause, pinching twice to skip, and pinching three times to go back. In saying so, my own experience with the vivo TWS 2 suggests that some earbuds have room for improvement as far as haptic and physical feedback goes.
Apple, Nothing, and Xiaomi’s buds also let you toggle cancellation/transparency modes by pinching and holding. Vivo’s buds also let you pinch and swipe up to control volume, while Nothing’s earbuds offer a double-pinch-and-hold gesture for volume that colleague Rita El-Khoury found finicky.
Do you prefer pinch or touch controls on your earbuds?
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Either way, we’re guessing Samsung could adopt a similar approach with the Galaxy Buds 3 series and the included pinch sensor. This could be a very good thing, as Rita felt pinch gestures were superior to touch/swipe controls. Pinch and squeeze gestures generally require more deliberate actions to trigger. By contrast, touch/swipe controls can be accidentally activated by your hair or when you’re simply adjusting the bud in your ear.
It’s also worth noting that the Samsung buds in these images have red or blue lights at the root of the stem. This could potentially be in line with the so-called “blade lights” that recently emerged as part of a Galaxy Buds 3 Pro leak.
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