In the vast sea of wireless Bluetooth headphones with active noise cancellation, there's one product that has stood among the pack: the Sony WH-1000XM3. People really love these headphones (multiple XDA staffers have them), which means people are really interested in seeing how Sony will follow up on them. Information has started to pop up about the Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones, and today, an APK teardown is revealing even more features.

First, back in March, XDA's Mishaal Rahman shared some live photos of the Sony WH-1000XM4. The design of the WH-1000XM4 headphones isn't that exciting as it's essentially identical to the Sony WH-1000XM3. The headphones were certified by Brazil's Anatel, the country's equivalent to the U.S. FCC. Mishaal also shared two pages of the device's manual.

Fast forward to today and we've got even more goodies about the Sony WH-1000XM4 to share. Twitter user @justplayinghard posted some of his findings from a teardown of the Sony Headphones Connect APK. We also did our own teardown to corroborate these details. First up, there will be three colors: Black, Silver, and White. The Black and Silver colors can be seen below, but we did not include the render of the White model since the image in the APK was a placeholder one.

DSEE Extreme

Next up is DSEE Extreme. Based on the strings, it sounds like DSEE Extreme is DSEE HX with some unspecified AI enhancements. DSEE HX is an existing feature of Sony headphones (including the WH-1000XM3) that upscales sound sources to higher quality. Sony filed a trademark for DSEE Extreme last month and launched "DSEE Ultimate" with the Xperia 1 II. It's likely that these two terms refer to the same technology, but we'll have to wait and see.

        <string name="DSEEHX_AI_Param_Auto">Auto</string>
<string name="DSEEHX_AI_Param_Off">Off</string>
<string name="DSEEHX_AI_Title">DSEE Extreme</string>
<string name="DSEE_HX_AI_ON">DSEE Extreme On</string>

Multi Point Connections

The next feature is something that people will really love. The Sony WH-1000XM4 may be able to connect to multiple devices at once to quickly switch between them, though that appears to be limited to two devices maximum. The Sony WH-1000XM3 can store multiple Bluetooth pairings, but you have to disconnect from one to connect to another. That would mean that the WH-1000XM4 headphones may be able to swap between paired devices much more quickly than the WH-1000XM3. Based on the strings, it sounds like all you have to do to swap audio output from one device to another is to simply play media from the currently inactive, but paired and connected, device. The one downside of this feature is that the high-quality LDAC Bluetooth audio codec can't be used when multi-point is enabled.

Smart Talking/Speak-to-Chat

The last feature might be the most interesting and useful. "Smart Talking" may allow the Sony WH-1000XM4 to automatically enable ambient sound when voice is detected. So if you are trying to talk to someone, the headphones will automatically allow ambient noise to come through so you can communicate. After a user-defined time (Fast, Mid, Slow, or None), noise cancellation will return. Users will also be able to adjust the voice detection sensitivity from Auto (based on ambient sound), High, or Low in case users find that it activates too often (such as when the person speaking is close by) or too little (such as when you're in a vehicle). You can toggle this setting either from within the app or from (likely) the NC/Ambient button on the headphones.