QUALCOMM’S SMART GLASSES GET AN AR BOOST! MIGHT TOPPLE APPLE
Qualcomm’s smart glass is one of the most important announcements in a surge in VR headsets. The company’s latest Snapdragon phone processors were revealed, as well as a new line of AR glasses-optimized chips. These chips will be used to power the next generation of smart glasses, which are expected to arrive in 2023-2025.
Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1, a new platform from the company, is a different kind of platform to its top-end XR2 CPU. This processor is already used in standalone VR headsets such as the Meta Quest 2 or Pico 4. The AR2 is more focused on sensor-based processing and camera than graphics. This helps to increase battery life for smaller glasses. The design is divided into three coprocessors that are intended to reside in the arm of smart glasses as well as above the bridge. This is intended to reduce wires and overheating in future glasses designs.
The AR2 Gen 1 glasses may use cameras faster for depth sensing and scanning. Qualcomm is promising faster artificial intelligence for object recognition and hand tracking than the XR2 chips found in headsets like the Quest 2. However, it uses half the power of the XR2 chips. The AR2 Gen 1 is designed to work in a way that’s similar to smartwatches, and hide large batteries on normal-sized glasses.
Traditional VR headsets won’t use the AR2 Gen 1 chip. Qualcomm states that the new AR chips will not improve the quality of existing VR. The existing AR glasses and headsets have smaller viewing areas and rely more on pop-up graphics than the large full-field graphics that VR requires.
Qualcomm is relying heavily on smartphones, computers, and the cloud to power future glasses. This chipset also includes Wi-Fi 7 and a variety of smartphones running Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips. The Snapdragon Spaces software platform and Wi-Fi 7 could be used wirelessly to process AR graphics for these glasses. They are wearable peripherals. However, the glasses can do some things by themselves.
The glasses support iris authentication. This is done on glasses equipped with a security chip. It remains to be seen how other manufacturers use this feature.
