As endearing as Samsung is, it has a weird knack for tarnishing its image by artificially gating some features so as to nudge its customer base towards newer offerings. In doing so, the South Korean behemoth not only reeks of desperation but also risks alienating some of its most loyal customers.

One of the features of the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro is its Super Wideband speech, which doubles the standard Bluetooth call bandwidth from 8kHz to 16kHz, resulting in clearer, more natural-sounding voice calls, while also helping to capture subtle high-frequency sounds.

Technically, the Buds 4 Pro's Super Wideband speech can be supported on Samsung's older flagships , especially as the only hardware requirements for porting over this compatibility relate to .

Samsung, in its infinite wisdom however, has refused to unlock the S24 Ultra's compatibility with the Buds 4 Pro's Super Wideband speech. We can only hazard a guess that this is some weird attempt at forced obselescence to nudge users towards newer flagships.

Interestingly, Samsung is resorting to such blatant gimmicks when the sales cadence for the new Galaxy S26 series appears to be quite healthy, as evidenced by a recent in the production of the base Galaxy S26 and a 0.2-million-unit increase for the Galaxy S26 Ultra.

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