It’s no secret that the Galaxy S8 is brimming with some of the most cutting-edge smartphone hardware out there but Samsung didn’t really shout about the fact that it’s the first phone in the world to support the latest Bluetooth 5.0 standard, which is kind of a big deal.
Bluetooth 5.0 offers a number of benefits over the previous standard. It’s natively power efficient and secure but also boasts up to twice the speed, up to four times the range (at 128kbps or twice the range at 500kbps) and up to eight times the data throughput as Bluetooth 4.0.
What’s more, in the case of the Galaxy S8 Bluetooth 5.0 is robust enough to support two simultaneous wireless audio streams at the same time. Using what the company’s dubbed ‘dual audio’ you can push your tunes to two Bluetooth speakers or two pairs of wireless headphones at the same time, irrespective of brand, make or model.
How to use dual audio on the Samsung Galaxy S8
- First, take whichever two Bluetooth audio devices you plan on connecting to your Galaxy S8 to and initiate pairing mode on them.
- Connect to both devices from the Bluetooth pairing menu on the Galaxy S8.
- Once connected to both devices, tap the three dots in the top right and select ‘dual audio’.
- On the subsequent screen, flip the toggle to on.
- From then on you’ll hear your music through both Bluetooth audio speakers or headphones at the same time. You can even change the volume of both from the Galaxy S8 directly.
You may notice a slight delay between the two speakers or pairs of headphones depending on their relative distance to your phone. You’ll also notice that you can independently manage your connection to both audio devices from the swipe-down notifications pane at the top of the S8’s screen. Happy listening!