The new Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 is a chip for camera-equipped headphones

Despite its name, the new Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 is designed not just for headphones, but for hybrid devices too – camera-enabled earbuds, audio glasses and future form factors.

This chip doubles the on-board AI compute compared to the Gen 1 (it’s now rated at 0.128 TOPS), while also reducing power consumption by 40%. It also has a 30% smaller footprint on the motherboard.

“With Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2, we’re heralding intelligent audio wearables that enable experiences such as real-time translation, contextual assistance, personalized hearing, and multimodal interactions that combine audio, vision and AI,” said Ziad Asghar, Senior Vice President and General Manager of XR, Wearables and Personal AI, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Mind you, the camera support isn’t intended to turn some headphones into an action camera. Instead, the camera will be used to provide additional context for your AI assistant.

While its on-board compute power is impressive, this chip is also designed to work closely with cloud-based services. It offers “micro-power” Wi-Fi 6E connectivity (2.4GHz, 5GHz and even 6GHz), allowing the device to connect directly to the Internet instead of going through your phone first. This reduces latency and opens the door for phone-free operation.

Putting AI aside for a moment, the Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 supports all premium Snapdragon Sound technologies. This includes aptX Lossless, XPAN (extended Bluetooth range), 5th gen Qualcomm ANC, Qualcomm cVc (voice call noise reduction), support for multi-microphone designs and more.

The CPU inside is an ARM M55 running at 300MHz and it is paired with the eNPU 6 and several DSPs (digital signal processors). It supports Bluetooth 7.0 and 6.0. Power consumption is 3-4mA.

Several companies are already working on building new devices with the Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2: Bose, HP and Cleer.