Key Takeaways

• Samsung’s XR glasses project has apparently pivoted since VR rumors emerged, with a newly leaked short production run, no display, and a lower-tier SoC, in addition to a delayed 2025 release.
• They’ll likely resemble the Ray-Ban Metas instead of the Apple Vision Pro, but with better performance, connectivity, and efficiency.
• A wide variety of factors surely influenced the decision, including the still-tepid AR/VR market, rising costs of business, and a focus on high-quality development in the long term.

Extended reality, encompassing all realities mixed, virtual, and augmented, has always been a few years away from the mainstream. Only in recent years have steadily increasing performance, newly leapfrogging efficiency, and suddenly skyrocketing software capabilities brought skeptics around to possibly believe the rumors of comfortable, high-performance, ultra-versatile smart eyewear.

Sadly, we’re not headed for Ready Player One just yet, as a series of leaks have turned expectations of Samsung’s upcoming immersive 3D headwear into something more nebulous, although every bit as interesting. The latest confirmation that Samsung’s XR glasses project isn’t what we all thought it would be has arrived, in the form of a rumor the initial production run has been slashed by 90%, to a comparatively paltry 50,000 units (Seoul Economic Daily via @Jukanlosreve and Android Authority).

That’s on top of repeated executive quotes and spec leaks indicating that while Samsung may launch an excellent pair of smart AI glasses, it’s not about to release a life-changing VR headset. Here’s what might have happened to a platform that might have been, and might still come to pass.

The twists and turns of new technology

And the future of virtual insanity

In the first half of 2024, the stage was set. The Meta Quest 3 had hit the market months earlier to good reviews and effective health and wellness software, but no real user ecosystem to speak of. Rumblings of Samsung’s market-upending competitor to the powerful Apple Vision Pro grew ever-stronger leading up to the second Galaxy Unpacked event, when TM Roh, president of Samsung’s mobile division, teased an upcoming announcement.

Samsung, its revolutionary micro-OLED lenses, and a penchant for mass-market-friendly electronics got a huge boost when Qualcomm announced Samsung’s use of the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2, a high-performance, low-power chip designed specifically to dethrone the tech industry’s lifestyle champion and its Apple M2 silicon. Suddenly, Android’s leading manufacturer sat poised to bring extended reality back from the grave it’s had one foot in for years.

The Ray-Ban Meta frames that everybody’s racing to catch up to.

Without warning (yet somehow predictably) Apple’s supposedly groundbreaking headset bowed game way to its eye-watering $3,500 MSRP, promptly becoming the latest commercial flop. The VR, AR, and XR markets appeared as elusive as ever. By September, the ambitious expectations around Samsung’s formerly barn-burning VR wearable had cooled somewhat. That’s when Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm CEO, explained during a CNBC interview what he “really expect[ed] to come out of this partnership: I want everyone that has a phone to go buy companion glasses to go along with it.”

That doesn’t sound like a VR headset at all. Nor do the specs shared by increasingly popular leaker @Jukanlosreve in mid-November, which outlined a relatively minuscule 155mAh battery, 50g, and Snapdragon AR1 system-on-a-chip, the last a piece of hardware far too frugal for any kind of immersive 3D rendering. Weeks later, clarification emerged from the same source, indicating Samsung would introduce prototype augmented reality (AR) glasses during 2025’s first Galaxy Unpacked event (Yonhap News via @Jukanlosreve).

Given the anemic battery, svelte weight, and efficiency-forward processor, Jukanlosreve (whose insider reputation rides heavily on Samsung’s decisions and announcements over the next several months) shared that not only were the new glasses far from an Apple Vision Pro competitor — they wouldn’t even have a display. So much for augmenting reality.

Most recently, the leaker offered the shock revelation that the previous estimate of a half-million upcoming Samsung XR units has been gutted to a mere 50,000. That’s a fraction of what Apple will sell in 2024, implying Samsung still wants enthusiasts and developers to ready their talents for the form factor, but doesn’t expect its next wearable to take the entire market by storm.

Before unveiling the AR-lite glasses in January, Samsung will introduce the (potentially portentously named) XR software platform underlying them. We know they’ll utilize Gemini somehow. But then, Google’s been involved in this project from the start, and Gemini makes its way into everything.

What happened to Samsung’s high-end XR headset?

It’s out there, alone, on a strange roadmap, settling in for the long nap

A 2023 leaked image of Samsung’s prospective Apple Vision Pro competitor.

For now, rumors surrounding a full-on Samsung VR headset are all but dead in the water. All signs continue to point to the premium, immersive wearable still existing in some form.

We know, at least, that the performance is there. The Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2, in a page taken from Bluetooth’s handbook, outperforms the XR2 Gen 2 so starkly that it’s clearly a step beyond its successor. If Samsung does tap it for VR headset use, it will likely accompany lenses from Samsung Display competitor JBD. According to Jukanlosreve, Samsung determined that its own vaunted micro-OLED technology isn’t yet ready for action, and won’t be until 2026.

Various factors likely contributed to the apparent change of direction. The failure of Apple’s high-end headset clearly did Samsung’s prospects no favors. Rising costs for Qualcomm chips across multiple ranges, abysmal Samsung Semiconductor yields, and the looming specter of misinformed international trade wars likely all factored into the decision to release the simpler glasses. The potential for improved implementation of Qualcomm’s XR software platform, better transparent display performance, and the ever-hopeful search for better battery tech could also have played a part. After that, we’re getting into the realm of heavy speculation.

Why to look forward to Samsung’s upcoming AI glasses

Use every part. Waste nothing and remember it all

They’ll be more powerful, and likely even sleeker, than the Ray-Ban Metas.

The Galaxy Ring in similar, delayed fashion, but its demand skyrocketed such that Samsung expanded the initial production run from 400,000 to 1 million unitsbetween preorders opening and the gadget actually hitting shelves. VR has been around much longer, but clearly the market wants portable, comfortable convenience more than heavy, humid immersion.

What’s more, the Snapdragon AR platform under the hood of Samsung’s AI glasses boasts incredible performance for the power requirements and size. Its cores and clock speeds apparently pale in comparison to flagship smartphone SoCs, but refined hardware, specialized components, and an overall novel architecture give it (and its big sibling, the XR2+ Gen2, etc.) remarkable potential for advancing wearables both light and heavy.

We know for certain that Samsung’s latest wearable processor crop is engineered for near-instant wireless data transmission, perfect for transmission between a VR headset and high-powered base computer, and between AR eyewear and a high-efficiency smartphone. The up-and-coming, compact hardware has also been specially designed for vast improvements in AI workloads, despite demanding microscopic amounts of electricity.

An October 2024 multi-device AR interoperability patent awarded to Samsung, which sparked significant interest but no meaningfully direct predictions, points to an increasingly varied future of Samsung XR wearables. CEO Amon’s vision for a world where every smartphone has a pair of smart specs could still be on its way, and Samsung’s decision to essentially practice wearable development for an extra several months (at least) before jumping into true AR or VR bodes well for those excited about the next generation of mobile audiovisual computing.

But it won’t be in January at Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event.