Samsung’s Galaxy Beans are Coming in August With One Long-Requested Feature

Samsung’s Galaxy Beans are Coming in August With One Long-Requested Feature
Contributor: Tom Pritchard

This post originally appeared on Gizmodo UK, which is gobbling up the news in a different timezone.


Back in April leaked renders came out showing off a new kind of Samsung earbud. These new things were codenamed ‘Beans’ and featured a bean-shaped earbud skips the in-ear design of the Galaxy Buds in favour of a more open design.

We didn’t get much April’s leak beyond a look at the things, but we can exclusively reveal several new (and important) details about the Galaxy Beans. We’ve seen internal Samsung documents (which we can’t share to protect our sources) that confirm Beans isn’t actually a code name; evidently that’s the market name Samsung is going for this time round. It certainly beats another ‘pods’ or ‘buds’ derivative, and it’s nothing if not descriptive.

But while the Beans don’t close up the ear canal like an in-ear earbud might, they’re still set to come with active noise cancellation – something that was sorely missed from the Galaxy Buds+ that were released earlier this year.

For a smaller, more comfort-leaning earbud you would expect the battery life to be lower, and it is. Sort of, anyway, because a fully charged pair of Galaxy Beans will have an average of six hours of play time (talk time is still TBA). That may be less than the Galaxy Buds+ (11 hours), but it is the same as the original Galaxy Buds from last year. Of course it’s not clear whether that takes ANC into account or not, since that can be a big battery hog.

Either way the charging case will still offer enough power to keep them playing for around 24 hours, which is two hours more than the Buds+ and 11 hours more than the original Galaxy Buds. Like the Buds+ you can also get one hour of play time from three minutes of charging, so topping them up shouldn’t take too long.

On top of that the Beans come with the same IPX2 water resistance as both Galaxy Buds, another first in the Always On microphone, and a 13mm one-way speaker. For comparison sake, as you can see, the Buds+ had a two way speaker, while the original buds came with a 5.8mm one-way speaker.

For launch we’re looking at early-August, so long as we don’t get any COVID-related delays like those Google has been suffering from. Sadly there’s a £179 ($320) price tag in the UK, and that’s a lot of money. Not Airpods Pro money, but the Galaxy Buds+ currently cost $280 and the original Galaxy Buds cost $230 at launch.

Editor’s Note: Stay tuned for Australian pricing and a confirmed release date.

ANC isn’t cheap, clearly. Plus there’s all the other stuff in there that the others don’t have yet.

But according to a promo we saw, it sounds like you can swap in any old pair of headphones to get $50 off the price – meaning they’re a much more palatable £149 ($267). It’s still a lot, and there are probably a bunch of caveats about what headphones you can trade in, but it’s something. So long as you shop in the right place, that is.

Featured image via WinFuture


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.