Sony INZONE Buds FCC Teardown

I am sure many of the blog’s visitors noticed I did not cover the new INZONE release. This was mostly because any posts I made would have been drowned out by the coverage by the main tech sites. Besides, I do not get any review units, so I would just be reposting the press release

So instead I waited for the FCC documents to become available so I could make this teardown post. I do hope 52Audio performs a full teardown as it will be a lot more detailed than what I can present here.

Sony Japan does have an interview with the engineers but very little tech info is covered in the article. One small detail revealed is that the Bluetooth chip is a custom one from Sony, the L1. The chip is low voltage, high efficiency and has a reduced operating current. Below is a close up shot of the main PCB from the Sony engineer article.

Now turning to the FCC photos. Not everything is revealed in the documents but we do get a much better look than in previous filings.

In the first photo we have a good view of the underside of the main PCB. We can see 2 contacts on the right side, one for the antenna, and the second for the touch sensor. We also have a hole for a mic, which is most likely used for both noise and voice pickup. There is also a connection for a flex PCB at the top.

The next photo shows the antenna/touch sensor module in focus. We can see a hole for the mic in the bottom, along with the antenna contact (lower) and the touch sensor contact (upper). I believe the WF-1000XM5 have a similar design for its antenna and touch sensor.

Here we have the inside of the case and part of the charging PCB. There does appear to be some room where Sony could have added a wireless charging coil, but perhaps we will see a higher end model in the future with this option. Unless Sony deems wireless charging not fast enough?

Next up, we have the main PCB inside the earbuds. It is dual side with the main Bluetooth chip shielded to minimize any outside interference. We can see one of the MEMS mics, which we saw earlier in the photo from Sony I already revealed the main wireless chip in an earlier post, but it is always good to see a physical confirmation. The chip is the CXD3277, or D3277 here. This follows the same pattern as Sony’s other chips, like the S-Master HX, which is labelled as D3778 but has a model number of CXD3778.

I believe the earbuds use a dual NC mic setup (like the LinkBuds S), even though I cannot find any mention of this in any of the product pages. If anyone can find a reference to dual NC, please let me know below in the comments.