In 2020, Bluetooth 5.2 was introduced with support for a new LE Audio specification. At least two Apple employees are listed as participants in the development of LE Audio, and Apple is likely to adopt the specification for use in future devices.
According to a newly published filing in the Bluetooth SIG database, Apple recently had an unknown component with Bluetooth 5.3 support tested. The filing does not reveal any other notable details, but along with a similar filing last month, it suggests that Apple is preparing for future devices with Bluetooth versions that support LE Audio.
LE Audio would be particularly beneficial for AirPods, such as the second-generation AirPods Pro rumored to launch later this year. Below, we've outlined five benefits that LE Audio would have for future AirPods Pro, assuming that source devices like the iPhone, iPad, and Mac are also upgraded with support for the specification in the future.
Improved audio quality: LE Audio includes a new low-power audio codec called LC3 that provides improved audio quality compared to the classic SBC codec, even at a 50% lower bit rate, according to the Bluetooth SIG.
Longer battery life: With the low-power LC3 audio codec, future AirPods Pro would have longer battery life for audio playback.
Multi-stream audio: LE Audio would enable the transmission of multiple synchronized audio streams between a source device like an iPhone or Mac and the AirPods Pro. This would allow for an individual left and right AirPod to each have its own Bluetooth audio connection with a device supporting LE Audio for improved reliability.
Connect many pairs of AirPods to an iPhone at once: LE Audio would allow for many pairs of AirPods to directly connect to a future iPhone, iPad, Mac, or other device and play audio simultaneously. Apple already has a feature that allows an iPhone or iPad user with AirPods to share audio with another person with AirPods, but the feature does not work with more than two pairs of AirPods.
No switching between iPhone and Mac required: LE Audio would allow AirPods to connect to multiple source devices like an iPhone and Mac simultaneously, eliminating the need to switch the AirPods between devices.
In July, the Bluetooth SIG said it anticipates availability of products with support for LE Audio to ramp up by the end of 2022.
Thursday December 11, 2025 8:49 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple seeded the second iOS 26.2 Release Candidate to developers earlier this week, meaning the update will be released to the general public very soon.
Apple confirmed iOS 26.2 would be released in December, but it did not provide a specific date. We expect the update to be released by early next week.
iOS 26.2 includes a handful of new features and changes on the iPhone, such as a new...
Wednesday December 10, 2025 2:52 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Google Maps on iOS quietly gained a new feature recently that automatically recognizes where you've parked your vehicle and saves the location for you.
Announced on LinkedIn by Rio Akasaka, Google Maps' senior product manager, the new feature auto-detects your parked location even if you don't use the parking pin function, saves it for up to 48 hours, and then automatically removes it once...
Apple has ordered 22 million OLED panels from Samsung Display for the first foldable iPhone, signaling a significantly larger production target than the display industry had previously anticipated, ET News reports.
In the now-seemingly deleted report, ET News claimed that Samsung plans to mass-produce 11 million inward-folding OLED displays for Apple next year, as well as 11 million...
Thursday December 11, 2025 11:28 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today released new firmware designed for the AirPods Pro 3 and the prior-generation AirPods Pro 2. The AirPods Pro 3 firmware is 8B30, up from 8B25, while the AirPods Pro 2 firmware is 8B28, up from 8B21.
There's no word on what's include in the updated firmware, but the AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Pro 3 are getting expanded support for Live Translation in the European Union in iOS...
Friday December 5, 2025 9:40 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is about to release iOS 26.2, the second major point update for iPhones since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least 15 notable changes and improvements worth checking out. We've rounded them up below.
Apple is expected to roll out iOS 26.2 to compatible devices sometime between December 8 and December 16. When the update drops, you can check Apple's servers for the ...
Thursday December 11, 2025 10:31 am PST by Juli Clover
The AirTag 2 will include a handful of new features that will improve tracking capabilities, according to a new report from Macworld. The site says that it was able to access an internal build of iOS 26, which includes references to multiple unreleased products.
Here's what's supposedly coming:
An improved pairing process, though no details were provided. AirTag pairing is already...
Monday December 8, 2025 10:18 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today seeded the second release candidate version of iOS 26.2 to developers and public beta testers, with the software coming one week after Apple seeded the first RC. The release candidate represents the final version iOS 26.2 that will be provided to the public if no further bugs are found.
Registered developers and public beta testers can download the betas from the Settings app on...
Monday December 8, 2025 4:54 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is actively testing under-screen Face ID for next year's iPhone 18 Pro models using a special "spliced micro-transparent glass" window built into the display, claims a Chinese leaker.
According to "Smart Pikachu," a Weibo account that has previously shared accurate supply-chain details on Chinese Android hardware, Apple is testing the special glass as a way to let the TrueDepth...
Wednesday December 10, 2025 12:22 pm PST by Juli Clover
The next-generation low-cost iPad will use Apple's A19 chip, according to a report from Macworld. Macworld claims to have seen an "internal Apple code document" with information about the 2026 iPad lineup.
Prior documentation discovered by MacRumors suggested that the iPad 12 would be equipped with an A18 chip, not an A19 chip. The A19 chip was just released this year in the iPhone 17, and...
Thursday December 11, 2025 4:19 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple's next-generation Studio Display is expected to arrive early next year, and a new report allegedly provides a couple more details on the external monitor's capabilities.
According to internal Apple code seen by Macworld, the new external display will feature a variable refresh rate capable of up to 120Hz – aka ProMotion – as well as support for HDR content. The current Studio...
Bluetooth LE simply isn’t enough. It can’t even do lossless standard resolution audio, let alone even dream of doing anything at the high-resolutions offered by Apple Music now. AirPods are not worth getting until they can reliably do bit-perfect 16/44.1 at the very least.
Most radiation is non-ionizing beyond a certain distance. For example, Wi-Fi routers are only ionizing within like 6 inches. Bluetooth is ionizing at such a small distance and such a low level that it is meaningless.
There’s a whole bunch of rules around what power and frequency your waves can be that are set by the FCC for safety reasons.
The reason 5G has lots of smaller towers is partially because it would be unsafe for there to be a super powerful 5G radio, because within the first X meters, it would be ionizing.
Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t understand the complexity, and they think more towers = more radiation = cancer…. Or they don’t realize that the frequencies and power levels are chosen to be safe at the distances the products are used.
That being said, there is some SMALL, and I mean VERY SMALL evidence that phones might be ionizing within about 2mm while on a phone call. This has led to some recommendations to hold the phone SLIGHTLY away from your face. But truly, even if it was ionizing, the distance would be so short that you’re probably being exposed to more ionizing radiation from the Sun on a daily basis.
In short, don’t worry about it. The sun is a bigger radiation danger than any electronics you are using.
Sorry for chiming in here, but the ionization capability of a certain type of radiation is not a function of its traveling distance (nor its intensity), it's exclusively a function of its frequency or more specifically, a function of the energy of each single quantum/photon. For a photon to have an ionizing effect on matter, it must have a sufficiently high frequency (translating to a sufficiently low wavelength). “Sufficient” depends to a certain degree on the type of atom/molecule subject to radiation (some species of atoms/molecules are ionized at lower frequencies than others). The lower threshold for ionization is given by the mid to high UV spectrum range. Every type of radiation above is able to ionize matter (e.g. X-rays, gamma rays, particles from radioactive decay), everything below is not.
WiFi, Bluetooth, microwaves and other low-frequency electromagnetic radiation is NOT able to ionize matter (knocking out electrons from shells) of any kind including living tissue, not even within the first few millimeters, since their respective photons do not exhibit a sufficient energy to do that. They merely are able to excite the electronic (atoms, molecules) as well as vibrational and rotational (molecules) energy levels of the exposed matter. Thus, they certainly are able to deposit energy into the tissue which leads to thermal (and non-thermal) effects on it and this is the subject of ongoing research in terms of radiation hazards to human tissue.
Really sounds like Apple should have held the $549 AirPods Max until this was ready. This is everything we wanted in AirPods Max and so far it’s rumored that Apple hasn’t even started on AirPods Max 2.
