3 features I want to see on the Galaxy Buds 3

Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 sit under the Pros in the company’s lineup and offer decent features like active noise-cancellation, an Ambient sound mode, and touch controls for a reasonable price. They are some of the best cheap earbuds on the market, but they show their age at over two years old and are due for an upgrade.

The forthcoming Galaxy Buds 3 should drop later this year if Samsung’s release schedule is anything to go by, and there are already rumors swirling about what they’ll be able to do. It will take a lot to beat the Galaxy Buds 2s, which include ANC, wireless charging, and custom audio profiles for a reasonable price.

1 High IP rating

Wireless earbuds should withstand sweat and rain, so you can use them daily in all conditions. The Galaxy Buds 2s have a low IPX2 water-resistance rating that withstands up to 3mm of water drips per minute at a 15-degree angle and won’t survive rain or submersion. There’s also no dust resistance, so you’ll need to keep them clean if you want them to survive. This rating was barely acceptable in 2022 and doesn’t cut it in 2024 when even budget-friendly rivals under $50 offer an IPX4 rating to protect against sweat and light rain.

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For the Galaxy Buds 3s to succeed, they’ll need to match similarly-priced alternatives from companies like Jabra and JBL by offering at least an IP57 rating. It isn’t the highest rating, but it is in line with the cost, and it offers comprehensive protection against dust and can survive being temporarily submerged for up to 30 minutes.

2 OLED case

Galaxy Buds with an OLED display on the case were one of the more interesting products Samsung unveiled at CES 2024, but were overshadowed by TVs, monitors, and other devices. The unnamed prototype earbuds were displayed in a range of cases featuring a circular OLED display similar to the Samsung Galaxy Watch that can display useful information or play fun animations.

This feature would be perfect for making the Galaxy Buds 3 stand out from the competition, and it’s useful, too, because you can see information like the date and battery life on a vivid color display. Samsung was coy about whether this feature would make it into production models, and it would probably depend on the cost factor and other practical considerations like weight and battery life. It’s still a cool concept we’d love to see on the Galaxy Buds 3.

3 Live Translate

Early rumors suggested that the Galaxy Buds 3 Pros would have an AI-powered translation feature, which seems more likely after the release of the Galaxy S24 range. Samsung‘s latest smartphones include the new Live Translate app, which can transcribe what callers say in a foreign language into voice or text in real time. It’s a groundbreaking feature to help people from around the world communicate, and adding it to the next generation of Galaxy Buds seems like the next logical step, since it’s already available on the Google Pixel Buds.

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Translating live calls will be a major selling point of the Galaxy Buds 3 Pros, and it would be great if the feature carried over the standard Galaxy Bud 3s. However, we aren’t holding our breath because Samsung usually releases new features on Pro versions before allowing them to trickle down to other models.

When will the Galaxy Buds 3 be released?

Samsung usually leaves a two-year gap between its earbuds releases, with the original Buds dropping in 2019 and the Buds 2 arriving in 2021. It’s already been over two years since the last release, and it seems likely that the Galaxy Buds 3s will eventually arrive sometime in 2024 to complement the Galaxy S24 smartphones.