AirPods Pro 3 May Launch Next Week With a Catch
Fadhli Adnan / Shutterstock
Toggle Dark Mode
Reports have been heating up that Apple will launch new third-generation AirPods Pro alongside its new iPhone 17 lineup during next week’s “Awe Dropping” event. However, we may have to take a rain check on at least one significant new feature Apple has in store for the new premium earbuds.
The new AirPods Pro are expected to include several obvious enhancements, such as improved sound quality and Active Noise Cancellation modes, likely powered by Apple’s H3 chip. There’s also a very good chance that the new high-end earbuds will include heart-rate monitoring and possibly even a body temperature sensor.
Apple has been working on those for years, so it’s not the first time we’ve heard that these might be just around the corner. Many pundits expected we’d see these on the AirPods Pro 2 when they were launched in 2022, but it’s apparent that Apple didn’t have the technology ready for prime time at that point.
However, Apple gave us a big flashing red hint sign when heart-rate monitoring landed on the Powerbeats Pro 2 earlier this year. Beats is, of course, owned by Apple, so it’s not like the headphone maker created this technology in a vacuum.
Apple’s decision to launch the Powerbeats Pro 2 seven months before the AirPods Pro 3 also feels like history repeating itself; the original Powerbeats Pro launched in early 2019 with some distinct advantages over the second-generation AirPods, which had arrived less than a month earlier. It would be another seven months before the first AirPods Pro arrived to take on the Powerbeats Pro.
To add an extra layer of whimsy, the original Powerbeats Pro were announced on April 3, 2019, precisely 210 days before the original AirPods Pro arrived in stores on October 30, 2019. Apple unveiled the Powerbeats Pro 2 on February 11, 2025. Add 210 days to that and you get…. September 9. The date of Apple’s “Awe Dropping” event.
It’s an open question whether we’ll see additional sensors for things like body temperature. Apple has reportedly been working on this in parallel with the heart-rate sensors, but reports have been more sparse, so we’re not holding our breath. It may not be ready yet.
Nevertheless, there’s another significant AirPods Pro feature that we’ve been hearing about over the past few months that’s likely coming to the AirPods Pro 3, but this one could take a few more weeks to arrive.
In March, before anyone expected Apple to jump to iOS 26, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman revealed that he’d been told by his sources that Apple was planning a “Star Trek-like experience to AirPods users” that would add live translation to the earbuds. “If an English speaker is hearing someone talk in Spanish, the iPhone will translate the speech and relay it to the user’s AirPods in English,” Gurman said at the time, adding that “The English speaker’s words, meanwhile, will be translated into Spanish and played back by the iPhone.”
The iPhone was expected to do the heavy lifting here, which isn’t surprising, as we can’t even imagine a new H3 chip having the power on board to handle live translation. When Apple unveiled iOS 26 in June, it included a new Live Translation feature for Messages, FaceTime, and the Phone app.
No mention was made of the AirPods at that point. However, it’s not unusual for Apple to hold back a few new features to announce at its fall events. That’s especially true if the feature requires new hardware (such as the AirPods Pro 3, in this case), but even that’s not universally true. Last year’s “Glowtime” event revealed new hearing health features for the two-year-old AirPods Pro 2 that weren’t even available on the new AirPods 4 that it announced at the same event.
Last month, several folks found an image in the Translate app in the iOS 26 betas that showed a set of AirPods Pro surrounded by words in several different languages — strong evidence that the Live Translation feature will extend to AirPods.
Still, the presence of this image doesn’t automatically mean we’ll see this in iOS 26.0. Apple has frequently begun prepping code in its apps long before it’s ready to release a new feature to the public, and one of the reasons Apple may not be talking about this feature yet is that it’s not going to be ready to ship until iOS 26.1 or later.
After last year’s challenges in delivering on its Apple Intelligence features, Apple became more circumspect about laying out an entire roadmap for iOS 26. Unlike previous years, everything Apple announced during this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June is expected to arrive later this month in iOS 26.0. There’s probably a lot more that Apple has planned for iOS 26.1, iOS 26.2, and beyond, which it’s not discussing yet.
This has now seemingly been confirmed by an anonymous tipster who told 9to5Mac that, while the AirPods Pro 3 will “indeed feature two health sensors” — heart rate and temperature monitoring — the live translation feature isn’t ready and “will likely be added in a later software update.”
Again, this tracks with Apple’s more cautious approach about revealing longer-term features. It’s also still not even clear if this feature will be exclusive to the AirPods Pro 3. It’s entirely possible that it could also be available for older AirPods. It all depends on whether it requires the newer H3 chip to make it happen.
It’s not at all uncommon for Apple to delay features until later iOS point releases. In fact, it’s more the rule than the exception these days. The only thing that’s different about this year is that it’s not talking about these new capabilities yet. The only real question is whether it will announce some of these things next Tuesday as “coming later this year,” or continue to keep quiet and surprise us later.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
