Tech companies have pushed for many years for smart glasses to become everyday items at the same level as smartphones, but unfortunately, the technology just doesn’t seem there yet, or at least not at the level where everyone is walking around with a version of Tony Stark’s sunglasses.
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Despite the pushback from the public at the mass adoption of devices such as Google Glass or, even more recently, Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, this hasn’t stopped tech companies from investing millions of dollars into various forms of smart glasses research and development. Now, a new partnership has been unveiled between three heavy hitters in the space, Qualcomm, Google, and Samsung – all of which have their own expertise in various forms of hardware and software.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon spoke to CNBC and revealed the company has partnered with Google and Samsung to create a brand new product that will explore mixed reality in a set of glasses, and these glasses will be linked to a smartphone. For those who don’t know, mixed reality involves the device imposing digital images on top of the real world, versus virtual reality, which completely immerses a user in a virtual world.
“It’s going to be a new product, it’s going to be new experiences,” Amon said. “But what I really expect to come out of this partnership, I want everyone that has a phone to go buy companion glasses to go along with it.“
So, what will power these new mixed-reality smart glasses? CNBC reports Qualcomm has the Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1, which has specifically been designed for smart glasses and also enables AI applications to run on the device.
“AI is going to run on the device. It’s going to run on the cloud. It’s going to run some in the glass, some in the phone, but at the end of the day, there’s going to be whole new experiences,” Amon said. “I think we need to get to the point that the glasses are going to be no different than wearing a regular glasses or sunglasses. And then with that, we can get scale.“