The Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus are due to be announced next week at Samsung’s Unpacked event in New York City. Now we’ve already seen plenty of leaks about the two devices, and now we’re starting to see and hear more about the earbuds that are going to be bundled in with the new smartphones. Now it’s important to note here that these are AKG earbuds, and are actually being bundled with the Galaxy Tab S3, that was announced at Mobile World Congress last month. So it is possible that these are those same earbuds, and it is also possible that these could still be bundled with the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. Of course, we have no way of confirming this until Samsung unveils the two devices next month. So take this all with a grain of salt for now.
As we can see from the pictures below, these AKG earbuds are not Bluetooth, which adds further doubt that Samsung is getting rid of the headphone jack. They are also pretty small so they should be lightweight. Something else we are noticing is that these earbuds sport both AKG and Samsung branding. That is a first for a pair of headphones. Now this is likely due to the fact that Samsung has bought AKG’s parent company, HARMAN. Although that deal is not yet finalized, Samsung has been adding AKG and other HARMAN properties into their devices as of late. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 has its audio tuned by AKG, and we’d expect the same for the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus.
Samsung has been bundling headphones in with their flagship smartphones for years, but they are typically cheap ones that no one really wants to use. Now it looks like Samsung is preparing to give customers a fairly decent pair with their purchase – perhaps to help justify the price of these new phones which is said to be higher than the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge from last year. However, it is important to note that typically when phones come with a pair of headphones, and especially if they are premium headphones, they don’t ship with the device in the US. So keep that in mind, until Samsung does announce the Galaxy S8 and confirms whether these headphones are shipping with the phones in the US.
