Samsung Galaxy S21 could be joined by 'Galaxy Buds Beyond'

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A trademark filing for 'Buds Beyond' suggests a new kind of Galaxy Buds is coming soon

Samsung Galaxy Buds Live
(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Earlier this year Samsung launched the Galaxy Buds Live, a set of truly wireless earbuds that finally introduced active noise cancelling technology to the Buds series. But what's next? 

Samsung isn’t going to slow down on wireless earbuds so easily, and from the sound of things it’s readying up a new set for release. And they’re called ‘Buds Beyond.’

The folks at GalaxyClub spotted that Samsung had filed a new trademark application with the EU intellectual property office yesterday. An application that featured something called ‘Buds Beyond’ that covered the exact same use cases as earlier models of Galaxy Buds.

In other words, the application revealed the name, but nothing else about these mysterious new Samsung earbuds. So the question is, what are they?

The obvious answer would be that they’re an updated version of the Galaxy Buds Plus which launched in February 2020 alongside the Galaxy S20 range. While they were better than the original Galaxy Buds, significantly improving battery life and adding one-touch Spotify support, they were practically identical. 

The original Buds were great, so that’s not a bad thing, but we wished there had been more of a hardware upgrade.

Buds Beyond would be the ideal opportunity to add features like Active Noise Cancelling into the existing design of the Galaxy Buds — as opposed to the bean-like design of the Buds Live. 

As comfortable as we found the Buds Live to be in our Galaxy Buds Live review, that design doesn’t offer as good a seal as the in-ear design of the Buds and Buds Plus. That inevitably compromises the quality of the noise cancelling (and audio in general), so Samsung would do well to offer in-ear buds with ANC as well.

Experience tells us that Samsung will launch the Buds Beyond alongside another phone. The Samsung Galaxy S21 range is due to launch in January, according to the latest rumors, and that would be the ideal time to spring another pair of Galaxy Buds on us. At the very least, it gives Samsung another opportunity to give them away as a pre-order bonus. 

We’ll make sure to keep you up to date on everything we hear about the Buds Beyond in the coming weeks and months.

Tom Pritchard
Tom Pritchard
UK Phones Editor

Tom is the Tom's Guide's UK Phones Editor, tackling the latest smartphone news and vocally expressing his opinions about upcoming features or changes. It's long way from his days as editor of Gizmodo UK, when pretty much everything was on the table. He’s usually found trying to squeeze another giant Lego set onto the shelf, draining very large cups of coffee, or complaining about how terrible his Smart TV is.