- Eclipsa Audio is a Dolby Atmos -Rival from Samsung and Google
- It’s in Samsung’s 2025 TVs and Sound Beams, Chrome and YouTube
- But it’s not in Samsung’s earplugs or phones yet …
Imagine that you have created a fantastic new platform for sound and you want the world to use it. And imagine that you have also caught the eyes of the world because you are launching one of the world’s most desirable smartphones. Would you:
(a) Use the phone launch to promote your amazing new sound?
or (b) not do it?
Surprisingly, Samsung (B) chose for his launch of the Samsung Galaxy S25. We really thought we would see (and hear) support for Eclipsa Audio, Samsung and Google’s rival to Dolby Atmos. But no. And it’s really weird.
A total Eclipsa
It’s really weird because we know Eclipsa is coming to Android. It’s in an upcoming version of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). But software support is only part of what you need to start a new format. You also need people to know about it, and most of all you need people to be excited about it. And the best way to do it is to let people listen to it.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 launch would have been a great opportunity to get the hype train at least to start choo-choo-and samsung has already started talking about ECLIPSA in its other products because it comes to its 2025 sound beams and TVs. But the Android sound market is potentially much larger than the sound bar, and there is still no evidence of Eclipsa’s arrival.
You can say – and I am sorry for what I am writing – that there has so far been a total Eclipsa.
We really thought Samsung would use the unpacked event to talk about Eclipsa and to advertise an update to Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro to support it as you also Need something to listen to.
I suppose one of the reasons Samsung didn’t do it is because there’s not much to listen to using the format. There is no support for it on the best streaming services, except for YouTube in the future.
As my colleague Matt Bolton wrote earlier this month, although Samsung had announced Eclipsa sound support, it still needs more: “Samsung’s support alone will not be enough to build speed for Eclipsa – it really needs to get the hottest Headphone manufacturers for all budgets on board to make it feel like a must-have feature.
But in the phones and earbuds right now Eclipsa doesn’t even seem to have Samsung (or Google, for that matter). At least not yet. The inevitable August Samsung pack may want to see the planets in line with Eclipsa.
