“I don’t care.” Samsung responds to accusations of copying AirPods.

Anyone with a working pair of eyes can see the obvious: Samsung’s new Galaxy Buds 3 and Buds Pro 3 look a lot like AirPods.

Sure, Samsung’s wireless earbuds charging case has a clear top cover; they come in silver (in addition to white); the stems — sorry, blades — on the Buds 3 Pro light up for various functions. But Go onThey look like AirPods. Naturally, the internet is criticizing Samsung for copying Apple.

But Samsung says it hasn’t copied its main consumer tech rival. In a media roundtable today, Patrick Chomet, executive vice president and head of the CX office at Mobile eXperience Business, said copying AirPods “was never a consideration” and that the primary goal has been to create the best product for consumers from the start.

“I don’t care,” Chomet recalls telling Samsung product designers and engineers when they suggested people compare the Buds 3 and AirPods. “I want the best product anyway, so we designed it to be the best for consumers. That’s the honest answer, and we may be exposed to criticism, but I really don’t care, because I just want the best product.”

Form follows function

Aside from the appearance similarities, Chomet also had a nerdier answer to the question of why Samsung redesigned the earbuds with stems. As I suggested in my initial hands-on, while Apple was the first to release consumer wireless earbuds with stems — a design that was widely ridiculed at first — the silhouette might actually be the best way to make wireless earbuds.

Chomet said the design of the Buds 3 Pro began with engineering them for premium sound quality that would surpass that of the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, and then creating the most optimal industrial design to deliver that experience.

“We learned two things,” Chomet said when they started working on the Buds 3 Pro 18 months ago. “The sound is even more amazing because you separate the woofer and the speaker, and you need space for that. And then this device has to understand your environment, and there’s going to be a lot of AI to figure out how it works based on context.”

“It may look similar (to AirPods) at first glance, but it’s not the same thing at all. I can guarantee you that.”

These features are debuting on the Buds Pro 3 in the form of drivers and speakers capable of delivering 24-bit/96kHz hi-fi audio, with a frequency response range of up to 40kHz. In simple terms, this means cleaner separation between the bass, mids, and treble of your music, and reduced distortion at high volumes. On the AI ​​side, the Buds 3 Pro have “Adaptive ANC,” which uses sound detection patterns to automatically adjust ANC based on the types of sounds and volume levels in your environment. And with AI patterns, Samsung claims the Buds 3 Pro can “restore” your voice during phone calls to almost match the sound quality you’d get directly from your phone’s earbud. Essentially, the Buds 3 perform a sort of upscaling to make your voice clearer over a Bluetooth connection, which transmits data at a lower sample rate and makes the audio sound tinny.

All of these improvements undoubtedly add up to a better pair of wireless earbuds (and a reason to sell people new ones), but there’s another technical reason why the Buds 3 Pro needed “blades” to enable better sound quality and AI-enabled features: the ears.

Chomet said Samsung could have made the Galaxy Buds 3 without stems and had working prototypes to prove it, but the wide variation in ear shapes and sizes meant that features like adaptive ANC and voice call restoration on the stemless earbuds weren’t as good.

“We have a team that simulates thousands of ears from all over the planet, and that’s how we got the blade,” Chomet said. “It may look like (AirPods stems) on the surface, but it’s not the same thing at all. I can guarantee you that.”

According to Chomet, and as I’ve suggested over my many years of reviewing wireless headphones and testing touring headphones in labs, moving some components like microphones and controls to the stems and making more room for larger or additional speakers is form following function.

Samsung may look like a copycat, but other wireless earbud makers like Nothing came to the same conclusion long ago. Apple simply got it right the first time, and it deserves credit for that. But at the same time, AirPods evolved from Bluetooth headphones, which were essentially long, elongated stems that placed the microphone as close to your mouth as possible. And Bluetooth headphones were just smaller, wireless versions of telemarketing/conference headsets with flexible mics. So today’s wireless earbuds with stems are really just evolutions of what came before them.

Samsung is under pressure right now, but don’t be surprised if other wireless earbud makers that have opted for stemless designs add their own stems or blades in future versions. This seems inevitable as companies integrate AI features and see the limitations of stemless designs. You can’t really integrate cameras for AI-powered computer vision without stems.