Google Announces Android Xr, A New Os For Headsets And Smart Glasses

Google is taking different tally astatine making headsets work. The institution conscionable announced Android XR, a caller operating strategy designed specifically for what Google calls “extended reality” devices for illustration headsets and glasses. It’s moving pinch Samsung and tons of different hardware manufacturers to create those headsets and glasses, is making nan caller type of Android disposable to developers now, and hopes to commencement shipping XR worldly adjacent year.

We don’t yet personification a ton of specifications connected precisely really Android XR will activity aliases really it mightiness disagree from nan Android connected your phone. (The Verge’s Victoria Song sewage to effort a less demos and prototypes — make judge you publication her story.) Google is making immersive XR versions of apps for illustration Maps, Photos, and YouTube and says it’s processing a type of Chrome that lets you do multiwindow multitasking successful your browser. It will too support existing telephone and tablet apps from nan Play Store, overmuch successful nan aforesaid measurement Apple supports iPad apps successful nan Vision Pro.

Google’s Gemini AI, of course, is astatine nan very halfway of nan afloat experience. Google has been trying to ace headsets for overmuch than a decade — location was Glass and Cardboard and Daydream, each of which had bully ideas but nary of which turned into overmuch — and nan institution thinks AI is nan cardinal to making nan personification acquisition work. “We judge a integer adjunct integrated pinch your XR acquisition is nan slayer app for nan style factor, for illustration what email aliases texting was for nan smartphone,” said Sameer Samat, who oversees nan Android ecosystem astatine Google, successful a spot briefing up of nan launch. As Gemini becomes overmuch multimodal, too, tin to immoderate seizure and create audio and video, glasses and headsets abruptly make overmuch overmuch sense.

The premier of nan connection “XR” for nan OS is perchance nan astir absorbing part. There are a cardinal position and acronyms for this space: there’s virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, extended reality, and others, each of which mean different but overlapping things. XR is astir apt nan broadest of nan terms, which seems to beryllium why Google picked it. “When we opportunity extended reality aliases XR,” Samat said, “we’re really talking astir a afloat spectrum of experiences, from virtual reality to augmented reality and everything successful between.”

Google imagines headsets that tin seamlessly modulation from virtual worlds to existent ones — again for illustration nan Vision Pro — and smart glasses that are overmuch of an always-on companion. It’s too consenting successful audio-only devices for illustration nan Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. Some things mightiness beryllium standalone; others mightiness beryllium overmuch for illustration an accessory to your phone. We’ll spot if Google ends up building its ain XR hardware, but it’s intelligibly trying to support a immense spectrum of devices.

Android XR is still successful its early stages, and astir developers are only now going to commencement getting nan package and hardware they petition to build for nan caller OS. But Google’s trying to move quickly adjacent year: a instrumentality it’s building pinch Samsung, codenamed Moohan, is apparently slated to alloy adjacent year. Android XR is, successful immoderate ways, a culmination of bets Google has been making successful AI, nan broader Android ecosystem, and nan wearable early of technology. All of those bets are astir to get nan existent test: whether anyone really puts them on.