Samsung surprised quite a few of us with the Galaxy Buds that launched at the same time as the Galaxy S10 smartphone lineup — not only were they affordable but they sounded pretty decent too (as I detailed in my review). Details about a follow up are now starting to emerge, and it sounds like they'll come with in-vogue active noise cancellation tech.

Rumored to arrive alongside the Galaxy S11 in the first quarter of 2020, they'll simply be called Galaxy Buds+, according to serial leaker Evan Blass. That suggests they'll be something of an iterative upgrade. They might not look too different from their predecessor, but we can expect some new internals to make them worth buying, with ANC a popular inclusion on recent competing models.

SamMobile has reason to believe the model number is SM-R175 and also thinks noise cancellation is a safe bet. Onboard storage could also return — with the Gear IconX, you could upload 4GB of music so you could take them on a run without your phone. Other specs are likely to stay the same, as well as color options such as black, white, silver, and yellow.

The original model was bundled with S10 series phones, and we'll probably see the same type of thing when the S11 drops in February/March next year. If they include ANC, a price hike will surely follow, so that'll make it an even more attractive freebie than before. For $130, the first-gen Galaxy Buds represented great value even as a separate purchase. If the MSRP remains reasonable, they should provide healthy competition for Apple's AirPods Pro and other ANC-equipped true wireless earbuds.

They could be coming even sooner

It looks like Samsung might not wait until the Galaxy S11 launch next year after all. As reported by SamMobile, support pages for the Galaxy Buds+ (in Korean) have already gone live, suggesting a more imminent release for the new earbuds. It's possible they just got a little excited and posted them too early, though, so we'll have to wait for more concrete evidence before we can be sure.