It looks like Samsung's much-anticipated smart glasses, developed in collaboration with Google and Qualcomm, won't arrive until late 2025, and they'll be sporting some familiar specs.
The latest report comes from the Korean paper Maeil Business Newspaper (via Jukanlosreve) which reported on a paper by a firm called Wellsen XR Research. That report reveals Samsung is planning an initial run of 500,000 units with a release date in Q3 2025 (between July and September).
That's a bit later than expected, but in line with a potential summer launch during Samsung's second Unpacked event of the year, where it typically launches the next generation foldable phones, as well as the new Galaxy Ring this year.
Apparently, the glasses will be powered by Qualcomm's AR1 chip and feature a 155mAh battery while weighing 50 grams. It will also have a 12MP Sony camera and a custom Gemini LLM developed with Google.
Many of these specs are very familiar as they're also in the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Those currently use an AR1 chip, though Qualcomm has released an AR2 chipset. Samsung's device appears slightly heavier than the Ray-Ban glasses, but the camera and battery are more or less matching.
The difference will then be between Meta's AI and Google Gemini, which will probably handle a variety of tasks. Maiele reports it can be used for "payment with QR code recognition, gesture recognition, and human recognition functions." The Ray-Bans don't quite offer that, but Meta did tease live translation during its September conference.
Smart glasses were teased by Qualcomm's CEO in September who hinted that the partnership was looking at mixed-reality glasses over a headset.
The Google, Qualcomm, and Samsung triumvirate announced its XR platform partnership in February 2023, and Samsung and Google claimed a device was coming in 2024 during the July Unpacked Event this year. However, behind the scenes, it seems Samsung has been fickle and had multiple pivots in reaction to Apple's Vision Pro headset and the reported failure of that headset.
What's interesting is that the report doesn't mention a headset. Earlier this week, a Samsung patent was discovered that revealed both a VR/AR headset and a set of smart glasses. That patent seemed to show the glasses potentially working in concert with the headset or as a different version of a "wearable device for displaying visual objects."
We know Samsung is working on some kind of XR device. The company has said as much multiple times. If it's coming next year, perhaps we'll get a tease of the device during CES in early January or possibly during the Samsung Galaxy S25 launch which is expected to happen on January 23. The Korean tech giant did a similar thing with the Galaxy Ring this year when it teased the smart ring at Mobile World Congress in February before launching it in July.
