Samsung accidentally leaks Galaxy Buds Live features, to rival AirPods Pro

New details have emerged about Samsung’s latest in-ear headphones, and confirmed details come from Samsung itself. Samsung Galaxy Buds Live, that’s the name of the next true wireless inputs coming from Samsung, and it’s believed to be featured at the brand’s big party on Wednesday, August 5.

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Now, we know even more than before about the new gadget. We’ve already seen what they look like and why they’ve been nicknamed “Beans,” but so far the features and technology inside have been largely a matter of guesswork.

Now, as XDA developers discovered, the Samsung Galaxy Buds Live companion app, called the Galaxy Buds Live Plugin, is available on the Google Play Store. This is what has now moved from the world of guesswork to certainty.

They really were called beans

In the Play Store list, a line says, “Please allow Galaxy Bean plugin permissions in Android settings.” I imagine this will be updated before the official announcement of the product.

Active noise cancellation

Yes, the key feature of Apple AirPods Pro will be in Samsung’s ears, which means that this pair aims to rival the Pro version of AirPods.

A companion app page indicates a toggle to enable or disable active noise cancellation. Actually, there is a typo there, but let’s ignore that.

This ability is also confirmed in another part of the application, which deals with the touch panel and its features.

Equalizer

How do you want your music to sound? Choose from Normal, Bass Boost, Smooth, Dynamic, Clear and Treble Boost in the equalizer.

Enable or disable touch controls

If those controls on the headphones are not how you want to interact with Buds Live, you can disable them.

On another page of the app, you can choose which function a touch on the touchpad will perform, and it also shows which way the Galaxy Buds Live fits in your ear. It seems that they will fall out of the ear, instead of, as some predicted, curl up completely in their shell.

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Spoken notifications

A setting reveals the ability to read notifications out loud, so you can obviously turn this feature on or off as well.

Find my headphones

The feature is always a crowd pleaser and the instructions on how to make the headphones sound so you can find them when they’ve slipped onto the back of the couch are accompanied by the warning not to use this feature when using the headphones.

All very well, but assuming that’s where they are and you didn’t notice?

User manual

The final screen of the app store has some wise tips: put the headset on the right ear with the speaker facing in. Ugh, I’m glad you made that clear. The user manual can also be accessed from this companion application.

That is most of what we have learned here. There are necessary permissions for storage space, phone, access to your contacts and SMS. Oh, and you need to have Android 6.0 or newer to use Galaxy Buds Live.

There is still a lot to learn about the new entries, like the price and any other features hidden in the manual, but this leak is a good start.

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