Samsung and Meta are planning to directly compete with Apple’s Vision Pro and are considering postponing the release of their headsets in order to utilize a more advanced chipset.
There are many developments taking place in the XR headset industry. According to reports, Samsung and Google are collaborating on their first XR headset, and there are rumors that Meta is currently working on the Quest Pro 3 headset.
It has been reported that in an effort to compete with Apple’s Vision Pro XR headset, Samsung and Meta are considering using the next-generation Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 3 chipset in their upcoming headsets. This would mean skipping the use of Qualcomm’s XR2+ Gen 2 chipset, which was first introduced in January 2024.
According to reports, Samsung is among the first companies to receive testing units of the XR2+ Gen 3 and is currently conducting trials on their upcoming head-mounted devices (HMD).
Rumors suggest that Sony is in the process of developing a non-PSVR headset, while HTC is said to be delaying the release of their XR devices in order to incorporate a newer and improved chipset. It is worth noting that, even though it was launched in January, no XR2+ Gen 2 SoC-powered device has been seen yet.
The XR2+ Gen 3, which is not to be confused with the XR2+ Gen 2 that was announced at CES this year…Is primarily testing its variant with 16GB LPDDR5X RAM aka the same capacity as you see in Vision ProAnd is four more gigabytes more than what we saw in XR2+ Gen 1 (Quest Pro) pic.twitter.com/iqq6qJdxzw
— Brad Lynch (@SadlyItsBradley) May 21, 2024
Despite limited information on the XR2+ Gen 3, the upcoming Qualcomm chipset is expected to potentially offer support for 16GB of RAM and 4K screens, as well as potentially utilizing Oryon CPUs. This is a significant increase of at least 4GB compared to the XR2+ Gen 1, which currently powers the first-generation Meta Quest Pro.
Additionally, it is believed by brands that the XR2+ Gen 3’s 16GB of memory and improved UFS 4.0 storage may give it an advantage in competing with the Apple Vision Pro, compared to the XR2+ Gen 2. This is supported by the fact that the Vision Pro, which is considered one of the top XR headsets currently available, also possesses the same amount of RAM.
Despite the competition’s efforts to match Vision Pro’s specifications, Qualcomm has chosen to stick to a two-year update cycle for the Plus version of its XR2+ Gen SoC. Since the XR2+ Gen 2 was released in January, it is possible that the new version and the headsets utilizing it will not be available until Qualcomm decides to launch it earlier.
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