Qualcomm exhibited reference AR glasses made by Goertek at Mobile World Congress 2024.
Kelly Wang/ZDNET
We’ve only heard rumors about Qualcomm, Samsung and Google’s joint project since the three companies first publicly announced it early last year. What began as a competitor to Apple’s then-unofficial Vision Pro XR headset has been plagued by internal disagreements and multiple changes to its plans.
In a recent interview with CNBC, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon cleared up some of the misconceptions and painted a clearer picture — and it’s nothing like the one most people imagined.
We also got to see the future of AI firsthand at Qualcomm HQ, and Copilot+ PC was just the beginning.
Instead of XR headsets that are self-powered or tethered to battery packs, the chipmaker is partnering with Samsung and Google to develop mixed-reality smart glasses. Most importantly, the wearables will be linked to smartphones, offloading much of the weight, processing power and battery needs of traditional headsets to devices we’re already accustomed to carrying around with us.
“It’s a new product and it’s a new experience,” Amon told CNBC, “but what I’m really hoping to get out of this partnership is that every person who has a phone will also buy a pair of glasses to go with it.”
Given Qualcomm’s involvement with some of the most powerful smart glasses on the market, such as Meta Ray-Bans and Xreal Air 2 Ultra, and the experience that Samsung and Google have building Android smartphones and platforms, combining the experience of the two seems like the most logical and safe way forward.
The Goertek Reference Glasses are equipped with a camera sensor and work with smartphones.
Kelly Wang/ZDNET
In fact, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chip is designed specifically for mixed reality experiences in small form factors like glasses. At Mobile World Congress earlier this year, the company showed me the Goertek reference design, which it’s sharing with hardware makers as inspiration for building their own wearables, and the device looked promising.
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Having tested larger VR headsets like the Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro, Qualcomm’s reference design was much more compact, practical, and most importantly, felt more natural.
If Qualcomm, Samsung, and Google can dictate the display quality, optics, and audio performance of their upcoming mixed reality smart glasses, we wouldn’t be surprised to see them gain as many fans as Apple has with the Vision Pro, if not more.
With so many people on board, pricing becomes important. On the bright side, we all already have smartphones, so half the work is done for them.
