With major smartphone OEMs ditching the headphone jack from their devices, Bluetooth earphones are going to soar in popularity in the upcoming future. However, despite their increasing popularity, Bluetooth earbuds still suffer from poor battery life and connectivity issues. Now, to ensure that these problems are a thing of the past, Qualcomm has unveiled its latest Bluetooth chip for wireless earbuds that is smaller, smarter and more power efficient.

The company’s QCC5100 Low Power Bluetooth SoC consumes 65 percent less power which helps in increasing the battery life of wireless earbuds by over 3x times. Additionally, the chip has better transmit power which should lead to improved Bluetooth connectivity and range. This should especially be visible in subways, crowded airports and other places with high radio interference. The chip also has twice the processing power of its predecessor — a dual-core 120MHz CPU — which should help OEMs in offering better active noise cancellation and hearing assistance. Lastly, the chip also supports Bluetooth 5 which is slowly starting to become commonplace in flagship smartphones.

Qualcomm’s previous generation Bluetooth chip was found inside many popular earbuds from last year. Even Google’s Pixel Buds made use of the company’s CSR8675 chipset. With twice the processing power and other improvements, the Pixel Buds 2 and other similar Bluetooth earbuds launching this year should offer some stellar new features while also being able to last for a full day on a single charge.

No major OEM has announced earbuds based on Qualcomm’s latest Bluetooth chip but we should see the first set of products launch towards the middle of this year.