If you’d like to control your playback from the earbuds and not your phone, you can use the lollipop stems on either earbud. Just be aware that you need to pinch them for most commands, slightly below the center of the stems.

Though the white version of the Samsung Galaxy Buds3 looks remarkably like the Apple AirPods, it is entirely probable that the Samsung Galaxy Buds3 were designed without Apple’s earbuds in mind. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say the most likely explanation behind why the Samsung Galaxy Buds3 look so much like AirPods is that the designers wanted to build on the successes of the Samsung Galaxy Buds Live, but in a more familiar form factor to the mass market. But where the Live used a two-point contact system to guarantee a fit, the Samsung Galaxy Buds3 don’t.

Apparently, I’m not the only one to take issue with this. Samsung had previously used sealed nozzles and your ear’s concha to hold its buds in place, sometimes even using a fin like the Samsung Galaxy Buds FE, but that’s conspicuously absent here. In the lab, I had to fashion my own concha fin to hold the buds in place for the ideal measurement because they would slip out of the ear otherwise. It’s a glaring problem — one that might actually be solved by the cottage industry of AirPods fit enhancers.

Samsung does not list a fast charging figure on its product page, but small batteries tend not to take all that long to charge anyway. Even a short top-up should get you a significant amount of listening time if you need it right away.