Qualcomm’s XR2+ Gen 2 SoC sets up a wave of Apple Vision Pro competitors

The Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional is popping out someday in early 2024, and since it’s a VR/AR headset that runs iOS apps, Workforce Android want to have a competitor obtainable. Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm vaguely introduced a mixed-reality partnership a yr in the past, which might have Qualcomm constructing chips, Google constructing software program, and Samsung delivery merchandise. Step 1 of this partnership has been introduced: The Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ SoC, which is able to energy many of those headsets from Samsung and others.

Maybe extra attention-grabbing than the person specs of Qualcomm’s chip is all of the associate discuss surrounding the launch. Samsung says it is “thrilled to collaborate with Qualcomm Applied sciences and Google in revolutionizing the cell trade as soon as extra” and guarantees a “best-in-class XR expertise for Galaxy customers.” Google is promising an “immersive and spatial XR” expertise based mostly on Android. Qualcomm is making a reference headset design based mostly on the chip and says at the least 5 corporations have {hardware} in growth, together with Samsung, Google, HTC, Immersed, and Play for Dream.

The XR2+ Gen 2 is an improve over the XR2 Gen 2 (non-plus) that got here out in 2023 and shipped within the Meta Quest 3. Probably the most vital distinction is a bump in decision, with the plus mannequin supporting “4.3K” decision per eye at 90 fps. The outdated chip solely did 3K by 3K. The decision of those headsets is important, not simply because video games will look nicer, however should you’re attempting to show a digital desktop and browse textual content, you are pushing the decision limits of present headsets.

You may want extra energy to push all these pixels, and Qualcomm says the plus mannequin “delivers 15% greater GPU and 20% greater CPU max frequency” in comparison with the outdated XR2. The chip helps “12 or extra concurrent cameras and devoted XR acceleration blocks allow unprecedented interactions together with hand, head, controller, facial features, depth estimation, and 3D reconstruction.” There’s pass-through video help with 12 ms latency and help for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3.

Nobody promised a delivery window that we might see, however with Samsung’s large present on January 17, possibly it can tease its headset a bit.