Samsung’s first standalone headset is coming in 2025, working Google’s new Android XR working system and powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset.
At present often known as “Undertaking Moohan”, the headset will function “state-of-the-art shows”, eye monitoring, hand monitoring, and an exterior tethered battery. Past this, Samsung is not but sharing specs.
I went hands-on with an early headset developer package showcasing Google’s software program and Samsung’s {hardware}, exterior battery pack in my pocket. You possibly can pull up a location in Maps and pinch your approach out and in of locales, nearly precisely as Google Earth VR provided from 2016 on PCs with Steam and the Vive controllers.
From 2025, Google Maps runs with full immersion and hand monitoring in a standalone headset from Samsung. Go inside a spot and go searching, exit to avenue view or head again up above to have a look at town, and zoom all the best way out to Earth scale.
Gemini is Google’s agent seeing what you see throughout digital and combined actuality. Use it to reply questions and pull up particulars about your present location, or just to rearrange your home windows. I put my Meta Ray-Bans on a desk and circled them with my hand and Gemini accurately recognized them as “good glasses”, however the AI additionally could not establish how many individuals have been within the room as I appeared round at them.
Google’s 2025 addendum to Daydream is predicated round OpenXR and contains Photographs, TV and Chrome. Along with the above providers, Google additionally guarantees computerized Play help for many apps.
I noticed a pleasant mixture of acquainted interface concepts in Android XR for resizing home windows and shifting them round, all usable with out eye calibration.
Android XR would not require eye monitoring though Samsung contains it. Meta HorizonOS works with out eye monitoring being obligatory, and neither Quest 3 nor 3S embrace eye or face monitoring sensors. In the meantime, eye monitoring is a core a part of its pinch choice interface in Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional.
The Samsung headset’s lens separation adjusted mechanically for my interpupillary distance after a couple of seconds of retaining my head nonetheless. The intense low latency passthrough was good in each open periphery and a small magnetic gentle defend that did a pleasant job sealing off the scene. I most popular the sunshine defend on and famous the arduous strap would rule out mattress use, the place Imaginative and prescient Professional and Quest 3S work effectively with mushy straps.
Perceived discipline of view ranged significantly primarily based on the precise positioning of the inflexible strap on the again of the pinnacle, pulling the lenses nearer to my eyes relying on tightness of the strap. Samsung and Google declined to offer specs for decision or discipline of view, and that is likely to be partially as a result of nothing right here appeared ultimate from both occasion. They wished my suggestions.
I have been gained over by mushy head straps for VR headsets with worn luggage for batteries and equipment taking all attainable weight off the pinnacle. Ideally, a battery pack linked to my headset also needs to cross by way of information and energy from nearly any linked USB hub. I need energy and equipment, even a captured HDMI enter, to come back into the headset over a single cable by way of the pack. I additionally anticipate my VR headsets to work with precision head and hand monitoring in complete darkness.
A VR headset like this travels effectively in a shoulder bag, and it could be nice for such a bag to incorporate a pair zippered pockets for controllers, battery packs and cords.
When my VR headset comes out of my bag and goes onto my head, my iPhone shouldn’t simply mirror its display screen, however must be constantly usable by tapping within the open air on a digital touchscreen even when it goes into my bag. Google and Samsung ought to make this steady use occur for Android telephones. This isn’t attainable in the present day on visionOS and iOS, nevertheless it must be, and Meta is exploring the identical performance with companions in HorizonOS.
Google Providers For Glasses & Headsets
Google’s vary of clear and shaded glasses demos vary from gentle to very gentle, with probably the most spectacular being a binocular waveguide that includes roughly two brilliant traces of textual content within the middle of my imaginative and prescient. One other glasses demo featured a responsive mini map within the middle of my imaginative and prescient which rotated as I turned in place precisely like a online game mini map. I instantly wished to take the glasses out into Manhattan to information me. I hated a monocular glasses show Google confirmed.
Translation and navigation ideas proven throughout this vary of glasses clarify Google’s ambitions are greater than headsets.
Android Equipment
A Google consultant advised in an interview that contact typing on any floor could be a solved drawback inside a 12 months or two. At Meta, Zuckerberg sees wristband interfaces surpassing keyboards just some years after.
At AWE in 2024, we tried out the AirMouse with its pure interface tying along with eyewear. I am studying to sort one-handed with the TapXR band, whereas each Apple Watch and AirPods embrace simple gestures for answering or dismissing calls. Meta demonstrated easy gestures in its personal wristband paired to Orion glasses.
A haptic band and watch paired collectively might make a robust mixture with eye monitoring. Samsung says it has controllers deliberate for the system alongside its battery.
The pitch for Android XR is that nearly something can turn into an adjunct to Gemini and pc imaginative and prescient, and Google goals to help Unity PolySpatial for multitasking volumetric apps. Microsoft Flight Simulator’s map of the world is surpassed, it appears, solely by Google Maps, and I used to be wowed discovering my avenue nook in New York as the person buildings of my avenue resolved in three dimensions. I noticed a service that continues to belong in every single place, and redefines what it means to know a spot earlier than, throughout or after visiting it.
I did not see photorealistic avatars nor video games from Google, leaving huge holes out there for differentiated Android-based VR headsets that might be crammed by a hypothetical Quest Professional 2. Porting is meant to be a straightforward course of from HorizonOS to Android XR, however some builders will even bear in mind issues like Google Daydream and Stadia earlier than they decide to a venture on Google Play that may require years of help.
“It’s pretty simple to deliver apps and video games to Android XR,” Digital Desktop developer Man Godin wrote to UploadVR. “It helps a majority of the identical OpenXR extensions that Quest/Pico help in the present day. Bringing my native OpenXR app over took just a few hours and the fundamentals simply labored out of the field. Personally I feel it’s refreshing to work with a platform that wishes to collaborate with builders relatively than one who tries to dam and duplicate us. Grateful to have extra choices for customers within the close to future and I’m very excited to deliver the very best PC streaming resolution to Android XR.”
Avatars & The Lengthy View
Google’s providers are helpful in much more locations extra than simply VR headsets, however the absence of photorealistic avatars in my demo might recommend the Samsung and Google team-up may fall quick on this side of the expertise, simply as Meta might be getting ready to get its long-brewing Codec Avatar expertise right into a hypothetical Quest Professional 2, as Apple works to mature its groundbreaking Persona expertise.
Meta is on the cusp of carrying a steady name flowing seamlessly from a Ray-Ban glasses view in WhatsApp to illustration as a hyper-realistic avatar in a HorizonOS headset. Even when Google can get 90% of Meta’s VR storefront ported over to Android XR, it might nonetheless lag Meta and Apple in a elementary space throughout a defining 12 months in private computing’s revolution.
Then once more, not having super-realistic avatars can also be a profit for some forms of on-line communication. Quest Professional is proof that face and eye monitoring is not tremendous helpful until it’s actually good face and eye monitoring. The following Meta-backed headset which carries extra face or eye monitoring {hardware} ought to switch from analysis to productization a key lacking piece of Mark Zuckerberg’s “metaverse” technique.
I might have preferred to check out controllers and video games as a substitute of the good monocle, however there are a lot of alternatives forward for Samsung, Google and different Android XR companions to exhibit such issues.
The Google Maps expertise in Android XR is elegant. I wish to see an Android XR headset with a mushy strap give me Road View Via Time by altering the 12 months on the road exterior a self-driving Waymo automobile. If Google can get Gemini proper, there’s actual potential on this platform.
