IT Home June 8th news, Apple's AirPods products have gradually evolved from the original wireless headphones to powerful smart audio devices. Now, with the upcoming iOS 26 system, it is reported that Apple plans to bring a brand new feature to AirPods - real-time translation, which will further enhance its practicality in users' daily lives.
IT Home noticed that since the first launch of AirPods, its features have been continuously enriched and expanded. From the original ordinary wireless headphones to now with functions such as active noise reduction, transparent mode, and dialogue perception, AirPods have gradually become a product similar to "ear augmented reality devices". In iOS 18.1 system, AirPods Pro 2 also adds hearing aids and hearing protection functions, giving users more reasons to wear them for a long time.
According to Apple analyst Mark Gurman, Apple is developing a real-time translation feature for AirPods powered by Apple Intelligence, which is expected to be launched in iOS 26 systems.
Specifically, this feature will be implemented through the user's iPhone. For example, when an English user hears someone speaking in Spanish, the iPhone will translate the other person's voice into English and transmit it to the user via AirPods. At the same time, the voice of English users will be translated into Spanish and played through iPhone. Gulman notes that since AI processing is done on paired iPhones, at least some existing AirPods models will be able to support this feature. In addition, thanks to the newly equipped H3 chip of the AirPods Pro 3, this feature may get some exclusive optimizations on this product.
This feature is undoubtedly a huge appeal for users living in multilingual environments. Take New York as an example, where you can hear a variety of languages every day. Being able to understand and participate in multilingual conversations in real time through iPhone without removing AirPods will greatly improve user communication efficiency and convenience.
Although the specific implementation details of this feature are not yet clear, Apple's powerful capabilities in software and hardware integration have made the outside world look forward to the smoothness and accuracy of the real-time translation function. If seamless translation is possible, this will make AirPods an indispensable smart device in multilingual environments, and even when users don’t listen to music or podcasts, it will be one of the reasons for them to wear it continuously.
