We've been waiting for the next set in the series of Sony's top-class active noise-canceling earbuds for a couple of years at this point. Sure, the WF-1000XM4 came out great and continues to be great with multipoint support added through a software update. But we haven't seen too much movement on what we expect to be the WF-1000XM5 - just some pictures coming out of American regulators in March. Well, we just got hold of another couple of breadcrumbs.
WinFuture (via 9to5Google) has revealed the XM5s will be able to charge faster than the XM4s. The new pair is said to take only three minutes of charge to get a full hour's playback. That said, the WF-1000XM5 earbuds won't have any better battery life overall. It's expected to last the same 24 hours including with a full charging case. In the case of the predecessor, it was 8 hours on a single charge and two more cycles with the case. This upgrade was hinted at in Sony's FCC filing as we reported on months ago with the XM5's case supporting charge currents of up to 230mA compared to 140mA for the XM4's.
We also get some high-resolution renders of what the product will look like in silver and black colours. The buds appear to be ever so slightly smaller than the XM4s, but maybe there's a bit of contour work going on there. It's also claimed that the exterior surface of the case will switch from matte texturing to a glossier one, perhaps to give off a better impression.
There's always more you could hope for with an unreleased product - perhaps Sony will include multipoint support out of the box this time - but it's only a matter of time before we either get some blockbuster leak or actually hear from the company itself.