The weirdest omission from the Samsung Galaxy S25 launch? Samsung and Google's new Dolby Atmos-busting sound tech

(Image credit: Samsung)

Eclipsa Audio is a Dolby Atmos rival from Samsung and Google
It's in Samsung's 2025 TVs and soundbars, Chrome and YouTube
But it isn't in Samsung's earbuds or phones yet…

Imagine you've created an amazing new platform for audio, and you want the world to use it. And imagine that you've also got the world's eyes on you because you're launching one of the world's most desirable smartphones. Would you:

(a) Use the phone launch to promote your amazing new audio?

or (b) Not do that?

Surprisingly, Samsung chose (b) for its launch of the Samsung Galaxy S25. We really thought we'd be seeing (and hearing) support for Eclipsa Audio, Samsung and Google's rival to Dolby Atmos. But no. And that's really weird.

A total Eclipsa

It's really weird because we know that Eclipsa is coming to Android. It's in a coming-soon version of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). But software support is only part of what you need to launch a new format. You need people to know about it too, and most of all you need people to be excited about it. And the best way to do that is to let people listen to it.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 launch would have been a great opportunity to make the hype train at least start to choo-choo – and Samsung has already started to talk about Eclipsa in its other products, because it's coming to its 2025 soundbars and TVs. But the Android audio market is potentially much bigger than the soundbar one, and there's still no sign of Eclipsa's arrival.

You could say – and I'm sorry for what I'm about to type – that there's been a total Eclipsa so far.

We really thought Samsung would use the Unpacked event to talk about Eclipsa, and to announce an update for the Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro to support it, since you also need something to listen on.

I suspect one of the reasons Samsung didn't do that is because there isn't much to listen to that uses the format. There isn't support for it on the best streaming services, other than YouTube in the future.

As my colleague Matt Bolton wrote earlier this month, even if Samsung had announced Eclipsa Audio support it still needs more: "Samsung's support alone won't be enough to build momentum for Eclipsa – it really needs to get the hottest headphones makers for all budgets on board to make it feel like a must-have feature."

But in the phones and earbuds world right now, Eclipsa doesn't even seem to have Samsung (or Google, for that matter). At least not yet. Perhaps the inevitable August Samsung Unpacked will see the planets align for Eclipsa.

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Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.