If you have a smartphone or tablet running on Android, then you should avoid using AirPods to listen to music or watch a video. If he is technically quite possible to connect AirPods to Android device via bluetooth connection, Apple's wireless headphones quickly lost their flavor in Google's ecosystem. Many features are disappearing and performance leaves much to be desired.
AirPods only support AAC codec, and that's a problem for Android
When we connects to his smartphone with wired headphones via an analog connection, the entire sound signal is transmitted from the device to the earbuds. But when using wireless headphones, the audio data transmitted by Bluetooth must be encoded by the reading device, then decoded by the headphones. It passese by the use of codec. There are several, the most common being SBC, AAC, LDCA, and aptX.
The problem is thate AirPods only support AAC codec. This codec is the only one that uses psychoacoustic modeling to transmit data. This makes it a very greedy codec in computing power compared to SBC or aptX codecs for example. However, compared to iOS, Android handles AAC very poorly, because the system tends to prioritize energy efficiency over performance, which reduces the bit rate and quality of encoding with the AAC codec.
However, not all new generations of AirPods have this problem.. The AirPods Pro for example, no longer limited to the AAC codec. They support also the SBC codec, which eliminates this connectivity problem on Android.
AirPods lose functionality on Android
What makes the strength of AirPods or AirPods Pro is the remarkable integration into the Apple ecosystem. Under iOs, all you have to do is open the headphone case near your iPhone so that they connect to it and a window appears indicating the charge level of the case and the headphones.
Also, if you are watching Youtube on your iPad, and you receive a call on your iPhone, AirPods will automatically connect to iPhone for you to take the call.
On Android, you will obviously lose these smart device features specific to the Apple ecosystem. But that's not all ! On iOs, a song is automatically paused when you remove an earphone. On Android, this function disappears. In addition, it is no longer possible to configure the controls to your liking, you will have to be satisfied with those that exist by default. Finally, we do not have access to Google Assistant, and it is not possible to know the battery level of the headphones.
Seen the quite significant price of AirPods and AirPods Pro, it is a shame to do without all these features. When we have a Android smartphone, it is therefore preferable to move towards other models of true wireless.
IF you still want connect your Airpods to your Android smartphone, it's here:
