Apple Reportedly Has Two New Sets of AirPods in the Works

Apple’s vision for camera-equipped AirPods may not arrive until next year, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll have to wait to see a new version of Apple’s earbuds.

Rumors of Apple adding cameras to its AirPods go back to at least 2024, when Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and analyst Ming-Chi Kuo independently shared reports that Apple was exploring the technology. At the time, Kuo suggested these would be used to provide better gesture controls for Apple’s Vision Pro, but that always felt almost absurdly niche.

After all, Apple sells an estimated 80 million pairs of AirPods each year, while most analysts doubt the Vision Pro has even cracked the half-million mark — and that’s in total since the day it was released in February 2024. It doesn’t make much sense to add a feature that less than one percent of AirPods buyers are likely to care about.

However, the pieces clicked into place when Apple began developing the Visual Intelligence feature to help users analyze the world around them through their iPhone cameras. Combined with rumors of smart glasses and a mysterious AI ‘pendant’, it wasn’t hard to see why Apple would want to add cameras to the AirPods as well.

While early reports expected those to arrive by the end of 2026, Gurman put the brakes on that notion in June, saying that Apple is more likely to release them as part of a product hit parade in late 2027, during an event that could also mark the 20th anniversary of the original iPhone.

In his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman confirms that’s still on track, pointing to a device codenamed B798. However, it seems Apple has also been working on an alternate version that may be more than just a backup plan.

This device, codenamed B790, is a “competing version of the same product” — something Gurman says Apple “famously” does — but it also appears to be on the books as a separate product that could be released sooner.

Gurman offers no other information on what features B790 will include beyond calling it “another version.” Although the implication is that these AirPods won’t include cameras, Gurman doesn’t explicitly state that, so it’s not impossible that these could be a scaled-down version of the longer-term B798 project, perhaps offering lower-resolution cameras for more basic image recognition or even the kind of gesture controls that have been hinted at for Apple’s smart glasses.

On the flip side, these might be nothing more than “AirPods 5.” While the AirPods Pro 3 only came out last fall, the AirPods 4 were released in September 2024. That makes them poised for an update, although that would still be a pretty rapid release cycle, as Apple typically spaces its AirPods releases out by 2.5–3 years; the AirPods 2 launched 27 months after the original AirPods, while the AirPods 3 came 31 months later, and the AirPods 4 hit a solid three years — roughly the same as every generation of AirPods Pro.

Lastly, while Gurman believes everything is still on track, a vague rumor last month suggested the camera-equipped AirPods were “suspended,” but didn’t add any context, leaving readers guessing on whether this referred to some or all versions.

[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.]