Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 With Built-In Wi-Fi 6E and On-Device Apps Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 chip at Snapdragon Summit in Maui, bringing AI processing, Wi-Fi 6E, and on-device apps to premium earbuds. Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 chip at Snapdragon Summit in Maui. The company invited journalists to the summit, and the processor is designed to power many of next year's premium earbuds and headphones. The headlining features are generational upgrades. The chip offers up to twice the AI processing capability, runs at up to 40 percent lower power, and has a 30 percent smaller physical footprint than the Snapdragon S7 Gen 1 platform it replaces.It is also the first Qualcomm audio platform with micro-power Wi-Fi 6E built into the chip. That Wi-Fi capability fuels the ability to run apps directly on earbuds, which Qualcomm considers one of the platform's best new capabilities.Earbuds can now locally run micro-apps, at least two at once, without passing any data through a smartphone. Qualcomm demonstrated this after its keynote with a scenario that many users would want on their own earbuds.In the demo, someone watched a movie on a streaming service in its original French audio with English subtitles on screen. When they looked away, the subtitles switched off and the audio switched to English, since they could no longer follow the subtitles.When they looked back at the screen, the movie switched back to French with the subtitles displaying again. This all happened in real time, with no lag between their head moving and the audio switching.A process like that works so seamlessly because the earbuds run the app themselves. Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 integrates micro-power Wi-Fi 6E, which gives earbuds their own connection to cloud services without a phone in the middle.Qualcomm's Snapdragon Sound Apps and Agents framework lets service providers such as Netflix or other top streaming services build apps that install directly onto a compatible pair of earbuds. These apps can also keep receiving new features after the product ships.Andrew Laister, a senior product marketing manager at Qualcomm who ran the demo, described how apps like this could reach users. A streaming service could bundle an earbud app into its existing phone app, so users would be offered the option to install it on their earbuds.He also raised the possibility of a company like Anthropic putting Claude directly on a pair of earbuds. Device makers can also decide which apps come preloaded. Sound Elite Gen 2 can run at least two apps in memory at once, so a voice assistant can stay available while you do something else.Beyond this new capability, the Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 processor upgrades most of the things earbuds already do. It offers the fifth generation of Qualcomm's adaptive noise cancellation, which uses AI to adjust noise cancellation as the fit of the earbuds, your movement, and your surroundings change.It also offers improved voice processing with multi-microphone earbuds to pick your voice out of background noise. Qualcomm aptX Lossless is included for bit-for-bit music streaming, while XPAN can switch between Bluetooth and low-powered Wi-Fi to stretch audio coverage beyond normal Bluetooth range.A new Snapdragon Audio Sense system combines microphones and algorithms to help a device hear both you and the room around you. Qualcomm is aiming this processor at more than just earbuds, with support for headphones, open-ear buds, audio glasses, hearing devices, and camera-equipped earbuds where the camera gathers context about your surroundings rather than taking photos.Rumored camera-equipped earbuds, such as the currently rumored AirPods with a camera, are one example of this category. So far, no products with the new Sound Elite Gen 2 chip have been announced.Qualcomm made it clear that it expects the Sound Elite Gen 2 to arrive in more premium earbuds first, which is how most audio features arrive. Rising memory costs are already pushing up gadget prices, so buyers who want earbuds with these new capabilities will likely pay top dollar for them. If you need noise cancellation now, there are plenty of options among the current market.