This leaked change to the Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 may win me over

I’ve covered this over the past year or so, but I’ve largely transitioned over to Samsung devices for my non-Chromebook needs. I don’t have anything against Google’s Pixel lineup, but I was interested in seeing what Samsung had to offer a little over a year ago when the Galaxy S23 Ultra arrived, and I’ve basically bounced between it and the Z Fold 5 ever since.

I even went in a bit further by getting a Galaxy Watch 5 (the Pixel Watch 1 and 2 are just too small for my wrists and look a tad silly) and the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro to round out my ecosystem experience. And you know what? It’s been pretty great! The watch, phone, and earbuds work quite seamlessly together, and along with Phone Hub on whichever Chromebook I’m using at the time, I’m getting a pretty holistic experience these days with my Samsung gear.

Why I still pick up my AirPods Pro a lot

But as well as it all works together and as much as I like each of these accessories, I do still have one primary gripe with the Galaxy Buds: they are hard to position in my ear and hard to remove. The sound is great, the noise cancelling is solid, and they are plenty comfortable. But getting them in place to enjoy is tiresome and digging them out of my ear is equally a pain.

But you know what solves all of that? Some tiny stems that, unfortunately, end up making any earbud look a lot like the massively-popular AirPods. But you know what, sometimes you have to simply acknowledge when something is done right; and Apple simply got that part right about their earbuds.

Now, we can hem and haw about whether or not they did that on purpose or whether it was a design/tech requirement and/or limitation back when the first AirPods arrived. Either way, it resulted in giving users a handle to use to position their earbuds, and it makes a huge difference in the day-to-day operations of your audio gear.

It is this reason – and this reason alone – that I tend to pick up my 1st-gen AirPods Pro on many occasions. I don’t prefer the sound or the lack of features: I just love the ease of a handle (of sorts) that I can grab onto for positioning in my ear and for simple removal. The pinch controls are a nice touch, too, but nowhere near as important as the stems providing something to grasp.

New leaks, new Galaxy Buds with stems

But according to a new leak from Samsung’s own software, it looks like Samsung is finally biting the bullet and will put some stems on their next version of the Galaxy Buds and Galaxy Buds Pro. Take a look at these images from the Samsung Members app that highlight how the pinch gestures will work on the not-yet-released Galaxy Buds 3 and 3 Pro:

Those images were pulled from a non-released version of the Samsung Members app by Android Authority and AssembleDebug, so it points to a release of the new earbuds relatively soon. Most likely, they will show up at the next Galaxy Unpacked event that is rumored for July 10th, but we’ll have to wait and see on that front.

Whenever they do arrive, I’ll be very interested in them. If I can get all the functionality of the Galaxy Buds Pro with stems that have gesture support, I’ll be as happy as a clam with them. And at this point, the rush to create some sort of branded, unique-looking earbud is largely over. If Samsung just makes these great and bundles them with Galaxy phones both on their site and with carriers, people will buy them because they work well with Samsung phones. It really doesn’t matter if they bear a passing resemblance to AirPods anymore.