Meta is looking to expand on what AR smart glasses could actually accomplish, and a new partnership with MediaTek proves that the company is taking it seriously.
During MediaTek’s 2023 summit, MediaTek executive Vince Hu officially announced a new partnership with Meta that would allow the brand responsible for the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses to develop something more capable of augmented reality or mixed reality experiences.
As the current generation exists, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses feature a camera and microphone for sending and receiving messages. However, the next generation of Meta smart glasses are likely to have a built-in “viewfinder” display to merge the virtual and physical worlds, allowing users to scan QR codes, read messages, and more. Beyond that, the company wants to bring AR glasses into the fold, which presents a much broader set of challenges.
To accomplish this, a few things need to change. AR glasses need to be built for everyday use and optimized to take on an industrial design that looks good but can pack enough tech to ensure a good experience. As it stands, mixed-reality headsets are bulky and take on a large profile. Ideally, Meta’s fully AR glasses would be thinner and sleeker.
The new partnership between companies means that MediaTek will help co-develop custom silicon with Meta, built specifically for AR use cases and the glasses. MediaTek brings expertise in developing low-power, high-performance SoCs that can fit within small parameters, like in the frame in a pair of AR glasses.
It also comes as an interesting move since the existing second-generation Ray-Ban meta glasses are equipped with a Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 SoC.
Little to no details were revealed about the upcoming AR glasses, other than directly stating that “MediaTek-powered AR glasses from Meta” would be a thing sometime in the future. Previous leaks position the next generation of smart glasses with a viewfinder as a 2025 release, while a more robust set of AR glasses was referred to as a 2027 product – if done properly, it would be an incredible product. Meta partnering with MediaTek looks to be a solid move in the right direction.
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