These are some specific particles of XO
So far, in its commercial infancy, Carl Pei’s Nothing has released one Android smartphone in the Nothing Phone 1 – had it not been so Euro-exclusive we could have put it on our best budget phones list – and two pairs of real wireless earbuds, all with a certain element of prestige. We’re now hearing another pair of wireless earbuds coming out of this upstart, but you probably won’t see too much of its name in and on the box.
A handful of images unearthed by intelligence wrangler Kuba Wojciechowski and published by 91Mobiles show some pretty interesting looking true wireless earbuds.
Do not worry, you are not the only one asking questions about the origin of the buds. We’ll be generous and call the design of the stems “gourd-like.” They’ll be painfully obvious to passers-by, as the placement of the earbuds causes them to protrude from the ears. They also embrace the matte plastic look like Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 did, which goes against the transparent, technical modus operandi of Nothing found on the Nothing Ear 1 and Ear Stick.
Likely related, these earbuds would be associated with an as-yet unseen brand, “Particles by XO.” It’s not clear if the whole moniker will be the brand or if the earbuds will be called “Particles” while “XO” acts as the masthead.
Retrieved firmware data indicates that the Particles by XO earbuds will feature active noise cancellation and include LHDC – a higher fidelity codec that has been adopted in the mobile space primarily by Chinese manufacturers including Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi. We’re not going to make calls based on that signal, but we wouldn’t be surprised if we see limited availability either.
In general, most wireless earbuds that support LHDC – such as Oppo’s Enco X2 – do so as their only advanced codec, although there are some exceptions, such as the Edifier NeoBuds Pro. Nothing’s own products have so far only gone so far as to support standard AAC and SBC.