Galaxy S8: How does playing audio on two Bluetooth devices at once work?

The Galaxy S8 has quite a few new and interesting features that users may or may not know about, but arguably one of the most useful is the ability to connect your new handset to two different Bluetooth devices at once.

The process of setting up two Bluetooth devices on the Galaxy S8 is actually extremely straightforward. Simply pair the first unit you’re using, then go to pair the second one, and the phone will ask if you want to enable “Dual Audio”. I’m not entirely sure why Samsung decided to include this as a toggle-able switch, but you can turn it on or off depending on whether or not you want to have the functionality available.

We tested the dual Bluetooth functionality on over-the-ear headphones, in-ear headphones, and Bluetooth speakers, and came away quite impressed with what this phone can do. When you enable the functionality on the handset it warns you that one device may be slightly quieter than the other one, but we were hard pressed to find much of a difference. We listened to the right and left earcups of the same pair of headphones that were separately connected, and while there was a difference in audio gain between the two, it was extremely minimal. If you’re player 2 in this situation, you won’t need to worry about getting a sub-par experience.

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I remember a long time ago in a city far, far away, when my high school band would go on long trips to compete at different schools and events. We often wanted to listen to different marching band playlists among many of us, but we had to use awkward 3.5 mm headphone splitters and an extremely long cable to be able to share this music between the group. By the time it actually came out of our headphones the signal was extremely quiet, and the limited length of the cable made it a huge hassle to share audio between us. With the Samsung Galaxy S8, however, this problem is completely solved (at least between two people), though it may have its caveats.

There are a lot of interesting use cases for this functionality, so we want to hear what you’re planning on doing with it. Our own Edgar Cervantes told me he would use it to share music between twi motorcyclists, which could be quite useful indeed.

What are you going to do with your dual Bluetooth experience? Let us know!