How the latest and greatest Samsung and Apple headphones lock you in their world

People always look at me weird when I say I use Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Live with my iPhone 12 Pro. But it’s a combination that makes sense to me: First, I need something that sits entirely in my ear, with no shank that might get knocked over by the strap of a bicycle helmet. Second, they work with Samsung’s companion Galaxy Buds app on iOS, so I can still access their advanced features. And third? I just like that they are shaped like little kidney beans.

But if you try the same with Samsung’s new Galaxy Buds Pro or Galaxy Buds 2, you will find that the Samsung iOS headphone companion app has not been updated to support them. Samsung wants you to buy a Samsung phone, so it seems to exclude you from a lot of small features, much like how Apple’s AirPods Pro are also restricted if you try to use them with an Android phone, or how OnePlus headphones were missing the key. features when used with non-OnePlus Android devices at launch.

While I can happily use the iOS companion app to edit and update Buds Live from last year, the same app won’t be able to recognize Samsung’s latest buds. If you are an iPhone user, this is boring enough that Samsung is not interested in your money.

But how locked down is the ecosystem really with the latest headphones from Apple and Samsung? Here are the specific ways that you will miss.

Before we get into the details, here’s a table showing the features you get with the AirPods Pro and Galaxy Buds 2, depending on whether you use the headphones with iOS or Android:

The good news is that basic features like the ability to listen to music and access playback controls from the headphones themselves are available whether you’re using the headphones on iOS or Android. You can also control features like noise cancellation and transparency (aka ambient) modes, which aim to block out and let in outside noise, respectively.

But the lack of a companion app or native operating system support means you just can’t access the features of some headphones if you aren’t using the headphones on their own platform. . Most AirPods Pro controls are built right into iOS, for example, while Samsung’s Galaxy Buds companion app doesn’t support its recent true wireless earbuds on iOS. This means that you are out of luck if you want to update the firmware of either earphone to a competing operating system.

These are the types of features that you might miss out on in the long run, especially if you need to troubleshoot. If your headphones are having a bug, there is no chance of getting an updated firmware to fix it if you are on Android. Or if you think your AirPods Pro’s battery is draining too quickly when listening to music on an Android phone, you don’t have an official battery indicator to fix what’s wrong (although the indicators on system-level battery in iOS means this is not a problem for iPhones).

In some cases, there are third-party apps designed to fill in the blanks. For example, the Android Assistant Trigger and AndroPods apps promise to show the battery life of your AirPods and let you access your phone’s voice assistant, such as Google Assistant, by tapping or tapping. the rod of the AirPods. But user reviews for the two apps are mixed and clearly don’t replace official native support.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

It’s also technically possible to use a hold gesture to activate Siri when using Samsung’s Galaxy Buds with an iPhone. But in order to do that, you need to customize the gesture controls on the headphones, which by default turn on noise-canceling and ambient modes. And the customization of these controls relies on a companion app that doesn’t exist on iOS. It restricts easy access to a feature that you can rely on every day depending on your needs.

Apple and Samsung’s ability to lock you into an ecosystem extends to features that are not directly comparable. First, the ability of AirPods to automatically switch between audio sources only works on Apple devices like iPhones and iPads. For example, it is not able to automatically switch between an iPad and an Android phone. Samsung’s Buds 2 doesn’t have a comparable feature, although the company did include a version of it on the Buds Pro where it could automatically switch between Samsung phones and Samsung tablets.

Then Apple and Samsung technically have features that let you find their respective headphones using an app, but they’re quite different. Apple is called “Find My” and currently it can show you where you might have left your AirPods on a map, depending on when they were last connected to your own phone. With iOS 15, this functionality expands by leveraging Apple’s Find My network, which means other people’s Apple devices will be able to report the location of your headphones as well. Regardless, the feature is technically cross-platform since it is accessible through a browser, even on Android. Samsung doesn’t have any of these map-based features, although like Apple, its companion app includes a simpler option to have your headphones play a sound to help you find them.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

There are also differences in the way the headphones handle pairing. On iPhone, just open an AirPods case near your phone to start the pairing process. But even when using a Samsung phone, you need to head to its companion app before you start the official pairing process. Google has its own version of the AirPods pairing process called Fast Pair, but it’s still not ubiquitous nearly four years later.

None of these missing features will fundamentally prevent you from using either pair of headphones to listen to music on the “wrong” platform. But it’s complicated to have to search the Play Store for unofficial third-party apps to unlock basic functionality, or to borrow a friend’s phone just to update the firmware. Especially when you know you can avoid these issues with a different pair of headphones.

And maybe that’s what Apple and Samsung are banking on: if they can convince you to pair their headphones with their smartphones in perfect harmony, then they know they’ve given you one more reason to stick with their phones. ecosystem. Yes, it’s easy to replace that outdated iPhone with an Android on its own, but then your AirPods, and maybe even your Apple Watch, and HomePod won’t perform as well. Ultimately, it makes it seem like it’s getting easier and easier to stay in the land of the iPhone. Sure, Apple could sell a few thousand more AirPods if they performed better on Android, but at the risk of losing much more expensive iPhone sales. Maybe that’s why Samsung recently revealed that its new Google flagship watch won’t work with the iPhone either.

In the land of portable audio, this all means that, unless you have a very Strong preference for Apple or Samsung headphones, you will get a fuller experience with less hassle by pairing them as with similar ones. You can fight ecosystem lockdown as much as you want, but sometimes it’s just easier to go with the flow.