Samsung’s Rumored Ray-Ban Good Glasses Killer May Arrive Sooner Than You Assume

Everyone needs a bit of the good glasses pie. With Meta plowing full steam forward, releasing three new pairs of good glasses in a single go at its Connect convention this 12 months (together with the Ray-Ban Display with a display screen), different big-name opponents are following swimsuit. Apple, for instance, is reportedly trying to expedite its first pair of good glasses by diverting assets from the Vision Pro crew. To provide you with a way of how pressing that pivot is, Apple is reportedly de-prioritizing the event of a less expensive and lighter model that folks would possibly truly, ya know, purchase, to pursue stated good glasses.

Now, it seems to be like one other smartphone titan is being swept up in that push, and the consequence could possibly be Samsung-made good glasses on cabinets earlier than you assume. According to a report from the Financial News in South Korea, we may see “Project Haean,” Samsung’s rumored (Google-powered) AR glasses, as quickly as early subsequent 12 months. It’s arduous to say how a lot inventory to place in that rumor with none official timeline from Samsung, however should you’ll permit me to invest for a second, it does really feel very potential.

On high of the palpable push towards good glasses, there’s additionally stable proof that each Google and Samsung are closely invested in AR. This 12 months at I/O, Google confirmed off a preview of its XR glasses, which have the same featureset as Meta’s Ray-Ban Display. While there was no indication of when these glasses might even see the sunshine of day, it’s clear that this isn’t some pie-in-the-sky prototype. Gizmodo’s Senior Editor, Consumer Tech, Raymond Wong, obtained to attempt the XR glasses a little bit bit, and whereas the demo solely ran for a grand whole of 90 seconds, they have been at the very least actual within the sense that Google was letting folks attempt them on.

That’s all to say that new {hardware} is clearly within the pipeline, and whereas Samsung hasn’t gone so far as saying something official (it definitely hasn’t supplied demos in a public setting), we now have gotten some robust hints. At the I/O keynote in May, for instance, GM of Android XR, Shahram Izadi said, “We’re taking our partnership with Samsung to the next level by extending Android XR beyond headsets to glasses. We’re creating the software and reference hardware platform to enable the ecosystem to build great glasses alongside us. Our glasses prototypes are already being used by trusted testers.” Well, effectively, take a look at that; Samsung and Google sittin’ in a tree…

That’s not a transparent sure or no, to make certain, but it surely’s not, not a no both. No matter how this performs out (or when), I’m personally wanting ahead to Samsung coming into the fray. Even extra so than Google, Samsung has an opportunity to make good glasses that really feel actually helpful. Given the breadth of its presence in telephones and different {hardware}, it may provide tighter integration between cell gadgets and good glasses than Meta may ever dream of, and that’s big for delivering a high quality good glasses expertise proper now, since they nonetheless depend on telephones for all of the big-time computing.

In the U.S., Samsung won’t have the identical weight as an Apple-scale ecosystem, but it surely’s nonetheless an enormous participant and can be the most important one (sorry, Meta) that good glasses with a display screen have seen but. Personally, my physique (or my face, I suppose) is prepared for the various and non-Meta-dominated good glasses subject that many people have been ready for.