These are some particular Particles by XO
So far in its commercial infancy, Carl Pei’s Nothing has put out one Android smartphone in the Nothing Phone 1 — if it weren’t so Euro-exclusive, we could’ve put it on our best budget phones list — and two pairs of true wireless earbuds, all of them with a certain element of prestige to them. We’re now hearing about yet another pair of wireless earbuds coming out of this upstart, but you probably won’t see too much of its name in and on the box.
A handful of images surfaced by intelligence wrangler Kuba Wojciechowski and published by 91Mobiles depicts some rather interesting looking true wireless earbuds.
Don’t worry, you’re not the only one asking questions about the buds’ provenance. We’ll be generous and call the stems’ design “gourd-like.” They’ll be painfully apparent to passersby as the bud tip placement essentially makes them stick out of the ears. They also embrace the matte plastic look as Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 did, going against Nothing’s transparent, techy modus operandi you’ll find on the Nothing Ear 1 and Ear Stick.
Likely related, these earbuds are said to be associated with a yet-to-be-seen brand, “Particles by XO.” It’s not clear if the entire moniker will be the brand or if the earbuds will be called “Particles” while “XO” acts as the masthead.
Retrieved firmware data indicates that the Particles by XO earbuds will have active noise cancellation and feature LHDC — a higher-fidelity codec that’s been embraced in the mobile space mostly by Chinese manufacturers including Huawei, Oppo, and Xiaomi. We’re not going to make a call based on that signal, but we’re also not going to be surprised to see narrow availability.
Generally speaking most wireless earbuds that support LHDC — such as Oppo’s Enco X2 — do so as their sole advanced codec, though some exceptions exist such as the Edifier NeoBuds Pro. Nothing’s own products to date have only gone as far as to support the standard AAC and SBC.
