Google and Samsung are working on a pair of smart glasses, Qualcomm suggests

Ben Schoon | Sep 5 2024 - 7:32 am PT

There’s been a lot of excitement around the mysterious mixed reality product that Google and Samsung have been working on for a while now, and it’s now been revealed that the product in question is probably a pair of smart glasses.

It was officially announced by Samsung in February 2023 that the company was collaborating with Google on a mixed-reality product of some kind which, based on various rumors, was thought to be a headset akin to the Apple Vision Pro. Samsung has yet to deliver on the product, but said earlier this year that we would learn more before the end of 2024.

Speaking to CNBC, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon strongly hinted that the product Samsung and Google are working on is a pair of smart glasses.

Amon says:

It’s going to be a new product, new experiences. What I really expect to come out of this partnership, I want everyone that has a phone to go buy companion glasses to go along with it.

There’s no explicit confirmation here, but given that Qualcomm is also a partner in this project, it’s the strongest hint yet as to what Google and Samsung have been working on.

Amon further explained that he’s “incredibly pleased” over the success of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, adding that generative AI was the “inflection point” for this sort of product. AI will apparently run on the device itself, as well as through the phone and also through the cloud.

Whether or not this new product truly is a pair of smart glasses, it’s based on Android. It also comes as Google is pushing for Gemini in this sort of use case, having shown off “Project Astra” on a pair of smart glasses not-so-subtly at Google I/O 2024.