Sony, Lynx and Xreal are also building Android XR devices

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Hands-On With Samsung’s Android XR Headset, Shipping In 2025

Samsung’s Android XR headset is launching in 2025, and we went hands on. Read the details and our impressions here.

Samsung’s headset will be the first Android XR device. But Google is building a platform it hopes will be the industry standard, and at least three other companies are already building devices to run it: Sony, Lynx, and Xreal.read our impressions hereIt’s unclear whether the Sony device is the standalone headset it

at the start of this year, or whether Android XR will only run on future iterations of the device.

First Impressions: Sony’s Standalone Headset For Creatives

We briefly tried out Sony’s upcoming standalone headset powered by the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2.

Meanwhile, Lynx tells UploadVR that while its announced at CES 2024 will remain “as is”, it is building a new headset that will run Android XR.

As for Xreal, there are no details yet of what it’s working on. It’s possible that Xreal, given its past existing R1 headset devices and their history of transparent optics products, is working on the first Android XR product. Google says the core Android XR operating system is designed to scale from full-featured mixed reality headsets down to simple HUD glasses.

Could Xreal be building the first Android XR HUD glasses?presentOf course, Android XR is not alone in the market. Meta is urging hardware manufacturers to use

Google’s strength is that Android XR headsets will include “most” of its Play Store of flatscreen tablet and phone apps, as well as its cross-platform services like Chrome, Google Maps, and Google Photos, already used by a huge percentage of smartphone and PC owners on the planet.adopt its Horizon OS platformWithout subsidized hardware though, and seemingly without tracked controllers in the box, Android XR might struggle to attract many of the developers of the immersive gaming library on Horizon OS. Google, aside from

which is a casual game, has not acquired any gaming studios that can create AAA VR games like Meta’s. Worse, Google’s most recent attempt at working with game developers, Stadia, spectacularly failed.

Still, Android XR could carve out a space in the market as a relatively open competitor to Apple’s visionOS, primarily focused on virtual screens and integrations with existing apps and services, rather than a direct competition to everything Meta is doing with its Quest headsets.Owlchemy LabsAppleBatman: Arkham ShadowvisionOSAsgard’s Wrath 2Meta

Horizon OS