The future Apple AirPods will give their users a feline ear. It will not be necessary to put your ear to the wall to hear what the neighbor is saying or to sharpen your ear to hear a distant conversation without the need to read lips. The California company is studying to incorporate hearing aid functions, in an improved evolution of its adaptive audio. In this way, the technology will not only cancel noise when necessary, but also foreseeably amplify ambient sound at will, in addition to conducting hearing tests.
Users of the future AirPods will have an excellent ally in Apple’s headphones, not only to improve hearing with superhuman levels, but also to detect possible hearing problems. Among the possible enhancements that Cupertino’s company is preparing, a new function that will help users to know their hearing health without needing to see a specialist doctor stands out. Among other details, the accessory will allow calibrating the levels of sound perceived by the user, with all kinds of tones, pitches, and levels of highs and lows.
Apple’s concern for health is not limited to the features of its smartwatch, the Apple Watch, which monitors blood oxygen saturation levels or heart rate, as well as possible falls, but will extend its scope of action to hearing health. Faced with the opinion trend that links intensive headphone use with hearing problems, the California multinational responds with the best argument at its disposal: high value preventive service information.
According to Mark Gurman in Bloomberg, the update of the AirPods to iOS 18 will allow users to perform self-checks at any time to detect hearing anomalies early. However, the same expert points out that the new features will not hit the market until the end of the year, along with the AirPods 4 and AirPods Max 2 models.
In addition, Apple’s apple-shaped headphones will take advantage of the strengths of Artificial Intelligence to improve sound quality through services such as Adaptive Audio, conversation awareness, and personalized volume.
Commitment to health
Apple already offers other technologies to promote hearing health with just a touch of its Apple Watch. This is the case of the Noise App, which allows watch users to use the Noise app to activate notifications when environmental noise levels can affect their hearing health. In addition, the ‘Health’ app records the history of high decibels, whether through headphones or environmental, above the recommendations of the World Health Organization. Apple’s technology also allows for noise cancellation or reduction of loud sounds through the microphone, “so that the AirPods Pro can generate anti-noise to cancel them before the user hears them,” as explained by Apple sources.
