At Galaxy Unpacked in February 2023, Samsung announced it was teaming up with Google and Qualcomm to develop an XR headset – and if these leaks are accurate, we might have our first look at its efforts to date. Kind of.
Very little is known about Samsung’s latest XR effort, although it’s expected to be a standalone device rather than something powered by smartphones like the old Gear VR headsets. This new leaked prototype (assuming it’s real) gives us an insight into Samsung’s design philosophy, though according to the leaks it’s not a prototype in development. Instead, this was what Samsung was working on until it saw the Apple Vision Pro and decided to start over.
The leak was first posted by Chinese publication Vrtuoluo, but the article has been removed (via android authority). The only way to view the original is via the Way Back machine who archived the original. The images it posted look a lot like a typical VR headset — like the Oculus Quest 2 — with what appears to be four tracking cameras, dual RGB cameras, and a depth sensor for full-color passthrough. No controllers are included in the images, so it appears that the Samsung XR device, like the Vision Pro, would use standard hand and eye tracking controls.
The prototype also apparently uses dual micro OLED screens and (surprisingly) a Samsung Exynos 2200 rather than a Qualcomm XR chip like the Snapdragon XR 2 found in many VR headsets like the Pico 4 or an XR 2 Plus like the one in the MetaQuestPro.
It’s worth remembering that this is just a leak, not one we could ever easily verify – as this is a prototype for a headset we should never see in public. We should therefore take the information and images with a grain of salt. That said, if this is indeed a canceled Samsung XR headset, we can see why the project is no longer in development.
No competitor to Apple Vision Pro yet
This leaked Samsung prototype is nowhere near a Vision Pro competitor. The specs are fine, but not in the same class as the Apple headset, and the design is considerably bulkier. After seeing the Vision Pro announcement, we can see why Samsung might want to go back to the drawing board.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing not to be a Vision Pro rival, though. Sure, it might be smart to borrow some of its cues, but if you mimic it too heavily, you’ll end up copying its biggest flaw: its sky-high $3,499 (about £2,800 / AU$5,300) price.
If a Samsung headset can offer many of the Vision Pro’s features at a fraction of the price – with rumors teasing it could cost closer to $1,000 / £1,000 / AU$1,500 – then it could be a winner . However, it will likely be a while before we see anything from Samsung. With it abandoning this near-complete project for a new one, we may not know anything concrete until 2024 or even later – we’ll just have to wait and see what it announces.