The FDA has approved Samsung’s Galaxy Buds hearing aid feature, which will soon be available alongside a hearing test.
Samsung says the Food and Drug Administration has cleared its hearing aid feature for the Galaxy Buds. As such, the company plans to make the feature and a hearing test tool available on the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro and Galaxy Buds 4 Pro in the US and select other markets later this year.
The function of the hearing aid is similar to that of Apple AirPods Pro. It is designed to provide people ages 18 and older with mild to moderate hearing loss with an over-the-counter hearing aid solution. The hearing test, meanwhile, would provide medical-grade results in just five minutes. You will be able to start the test from the Galaxy Buds settings on a compatible Galaxy phone.
Samsung
For each ear, the test will determine whether the user’s hearing is normal or classify them as having one of four stages of hearing loss. These are mild, moderate, severe or profound. Based on these results (which the user can access in the Samsung Health app), the hearing aid feature can amplify sounds that the user has difficulty picking up, for example whispers, distant voices and high frequencies. This feature also ties into other aspects of the headphones, such as noise cancellation, as well as beamforming to focus on audio coming from the front of the wearer.
