Whereas Samsung is already deep into improvement of its Android XR-powered Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional rival, Venture Moohan (freshly confirmed to be launching later this 12 months), Google I/O 2025 performed host to information that the South Korean tech big is now additionally chargeable for Google’s first pair of Android XR-powered smart glasses.
The opening keynote at this 12 months’s rendition of Google’s annual developer convention centred across the firm’s Gemini AI platform, with the promise of extra personalised context throughout first-party apps, tailor-made agentic talents, developments to its Imagen and Veo AI-based picture and video era instruments, and extra.
However because the presentation drew to a detailed, the corporate’s Shahram Izadi stepped out on stage to offer us an replace on Android XR (XR which means prolonged actuality).
The corporate’s combined actuality platform was already confirmed to be a collaboration with Samsung and Qualcomm, however till now, the one bodily manifestation of that partnership ever proven off has been Venture Moohan.
After an replace on Moohan, Izadi then moved onto smart glasses, detailing Google’s method to such {hardware}: “a digital camera and microphones give Gemini the flexibility to see and listen to the world, audio system allow you to hearken to the AI, play music or take calls, and an non-obligatory in-lens show privately exhibits you useful data, simply once you want it”.
After a (considerably bumpy) multimodal stay demo – which included video streaming, music playback, recall, navigation (see above), search and translation – it was then confirmed that Samsung has been made chargeable for the Android XR smart glasses reference {hardware}, as an extension of its collaboration with Google.
Samsung’s developmental smart glasses are reportedly already within the arms (or on the faces) of “trusted testers”, with builders promised entry to improvement instruments for the platform later into 2025.
Timing and rules
As thrilling because the promise of Android XR-powered smart glasses is, they have already got stiff competitors to sq. off in opposition to, primarily from Meta.
The rival firm’s personal efforts with AI and its ongoing collaboration with EssilorLuxottica have already given rise to what are essentially the most prevalent and high-profile smart glasses already available on the market, within the type of the Meta Ray-Bans, with the promise of new types of shades from sister model Oakley within the close to future too.
Meta’s glasses already do a lot of what Google’s glasses promise, nonetheless, they’re constructed on a wildly completely different and arguably shakier basis.
Google’s long-standing suite of search, productiveness and lifestyle-focused apps and providers has allowed the corporate to construct what’s seemingly a far clearer, and extra full and private image of its customers, which is simply going to raised serve the expertise supplied up by Android XR-powered smart glasses, once they do finally launch.
That ‘when’ is the silver lining for Meta, because it stands.
Though Google seemingly has the makings of a extra private and versatile smart glasses product, with a date nonetheless not set for builders to be capable of even start creating for the platform, it stands to motive that retail-ready {hardware} remains to be a good distance off, maybe so far as Google I/O 2026. Google has additionally established shopper partnerships with Mild Monster and Warby Parker.
In the meantime, new, extra superior variants of Meta Ray-Bans (codenamed Aperol and Bellini) that would chop any potential hole Google might need simply created are anticipated a lot sooner, quite than later.
Extra protection from Google I/O
