qualcomm snapdragon Archives

Qualcomm announced at Mobile World Congress (MWC) today it’s partnering with seven global telecommunication companies in preparation for the next generation of AR glasses which are set to work directly with the user’s smartphone.

Partners include CMCC, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI Corporation, NTT QONOQ, T-Mobile, Telefonica, and Vodafone, which are said to currently be working with Qualcomm on new XR devices, experiences, and developer initiatives, including Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces XR developer platform.

Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Spaces in late 2021, a software tool kit which focuses on performance and low power devices which allows developers to create head-worn AR experiences from the ground-up or by adding head-worn AR to existing smartphone apps.

Qualcomm and Japan’s KDDI Corporation also announced a multi-year collaboration which it says will focus on the expansion of XR use cases and creation of a developer program in Japan.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm says OEMs are designing “a new wave of devices for operators and beyond” such as the newly unveiled Xiaomi Wireless AR Glass Discovery Edition, OPPO’s new Mixed Reality device and OnePlus 11 5G smartphone.

At least in Xiaomi’s case, its Wireless AR Glass headset streams data from compatible smartphones. Effectively offloading computation to the smartphone, the company’s 126g headset boasts a wireless latency of as low as 3ms between the smartphone device to the glasses, and a wireless connection with full link latency as low as 50ms which is comparable to wired solution.

Semiconductor giant Qualcomm says its latest XR chipset, the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 1, will find its way into multiple virtual and mixed reality (MR) headsets by the end of 2022.

We know of at least two headset that already feature Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon XR chipset: the recently launched Meta Quest Pro and Lenovo ThinkReality VRX, both of which are VR standalones capable of augmented reality interactions thanks to color passthrough cameras (aka ‘mixed reality’).

Announced on October 11th alongside Quest Pro, Snapdragon XR2+ boasts better heat dissipation, providing it the ability for 50% higher sustained power and 30% improved thermal performance over the previous Snapdragon XR2 introduced in 2019, which you’ll find in many VR and AR headsets today.

“This allows more concurrent multimedia and perception technologies to be utilized simultaneously enabling full-sensory interactions, like creating life-like human expressions in the metaverse, without compromising form factor,” the company says.

Qualcomm says Snapdragon XR2+ introduces a new image processing pipeline providing less than 10ms latency for the sort of full-color passthrough seen in Quest Pro and ThinkReality VRX. It also supports 8K 60fps 360-degree video, low latency Wi-Fi 6, head, hand and controller tracking, 3D reconstruction, automatic room mapping, and high pixel density displays.

The company says “[m]ultiple OEMs have already committed to commercializing devices powered by Snapdragon XR2+ that will be announced by the end of 2022,” which means we’re due for a deluge of higher-end headsets which is slated to bring more competition to the prosumer and enterprise space.

Qualcomm Partners with 7 Major Telecoms to Advance Smartphone-tethered AR Glasses

Qualcomm Says Multiple Snapdragon XR2+ Devices Will be Announced by Year’s End