[coldtea]

>Earbuds aren't cell phones—there's not a lot you can add.

I can think of enough stuff. New Bluetooth standards, longer lasting charge, better audio drivers, health monitoring, embedded connection-free translation (babelfish-like), eSIM and calling/receiving directly from the AirPods (like you can do from the Apple Watch, but using Siri for the dialing). And those are just off the top of my head.

Heck, just the same model available in black too, would make tons of people replace their AirPods 3-4 years after they got them.

[Wowfunhappy]

> New Bluetooth standards, longer lasting charge, better audio drivers, health monitoring, embedded connection-free translation (babelfish-like), eSIM and calling/receiving directly from the AirPods (like you can do from the Apple Watch, but using Siri for the dialing).

Most of these hinge on the earbuds becoming more self-sufficient computing devices, rather than pure audio devices. I think we're a long way off from that becoming practical, because battery tech is improving at too slow a pace.

[coldtea]

Yeah, but we're talking 3-4 years between each step. Those are enough features for 4 such iterations, or 16+ years.

Let's consider phones 16 years ago and today (or watches, for that matter).

[Wowfunhappy]

They're mostly one step.

> Embedded connection-free translation (babelfish-like), eSIM and calling/receiving directly from the AirPods

This all fundamentally requires a powerful computer in the Airpods, which in turn fundamentally requires a longer laster battery. Apple may try to roll them out over time, but they can't begin the rollout until battery technology fundamentally improves, which it isn't doing in the near future short of some breakthrough.

The one big improvement I could see them doing more near-term is health monitoring, though I'm not sure what it would add compared to the watch, which is more likely to be always on your person. Bluetooth upgrades and audio drivers are "easy" (relatively), but hard to sell to consumers by themselves.