- The Google Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, and Pixel 6a don’t seem to support Bluetooth LE Audio, the standard that defines audio streaming over Bluetooth Low Energy.
- Bluetooth LE Audio enables lower latency, higher quality audio streaming via the LC3 codec, as compared to the standard SBC codec used by Bluetooth Classic Audio.
- By missing out on Bluetooth LE Audio support, the Pixel 6 series will also miss out on Android 15’s new audio streaming feature, which is based on Auracast.
Although Bluetooth LE Audio was announced at the beginning of 2020, there still aren’t that many audio products on the market that support it. In 2024, though, we’re finally seeing many audio products come on the market with LE Audio support either out of the box or soon in a future update. However, to actually take advantage of LE Audio’s numerous benefits and new features, you need to own a mobile device or PC that supports the standard. Unfortunately, if you own a Google Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, or Pixel 6a, then you may need to upgrade your phone entirely to use Bluetooth LE Audio.
When you connect your phone to a pair of wireless earbuds, the source device (your phone) and the sink device (your wireless earbuds) establish a connection via their Bluetooth radios. During the pairing process, the devices negotiate to find out what profiles they both support. These profiles define how the two devices exchange data. The profile typically used for streaming audio from the source to the sink device over Bluetooth is called the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP). The exact codec that’s used to store the audio data that’s transmitted between the two devices depends on what codecs both devices support, but at a minimum, both devices must support the low-complexity subband codec (SBC).