Beats make some of the best wireless earbuds around, and while the brand is Apple-owned these days that shouldn't mean that Android owners get a second-class experience.
The Beats app for Android is getting some useful upgrades that Apple has carried across from its own iOS, and if your Beats work with the app then you'll be getting the new features too – depending on what ones your device supports, of course.
According to The Verge, there are two key new features here: Locate My Beats and Product Widgets.
What new features are coming to your Beats earbuds and Beats headphones?
The Beats app now has a new Locate My Beats feature that you can use to track down your Beats Studio Buds or other Beats earbuds, something that's a must-have feature if your earbuds are both expensive and easily lost, and the new widget enables you to add key features to your Home Screen: battery status and listening modes, so for example you'll be able to quickly toggle noise cancelling, transparency mode and so on.
That's not all Beats has been up to. It's also unveiled three new colours for the Beats Studio Buds: grey, blue and pink. The new models cost the same as the current red, black and white models and they should be available to buy from today, 13 April.
I really like the Beats Studio Buds, and it seems that you do too: according to Beats, the Studio Buds have become the fastest-selling Beats product globally to date in their first year. At £129.99 / $149.99 they're keenly priced compared to rivals and to my eyes, much better looking than the slightly more expensive AirPods 3 – but they're still a lot more expensive than our current pick of the best budget earbuds, Sony's exceptionally good value WF-C500. The Studio Buds sound better, but the Sonys are pretty good too.
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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).
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