(Credit: Google, XReal)
When Google announced Android XR six months ago, I was excited. An Android-powered platform for augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (XR) offering similar functionality to the Apple Vision Pro but open to third-party developers across a wide range of devices? Sounds great! I still think it does, and could be exactly what the industry needs, but after the Google I/O keynote this week, it's pretty clear any real product using the platform won't be coming out for a while.
Google's developer conference was predictably Gemini-focused, but some Android XR news also came out of it. Actually, most of that news had to do with AI, too. The Google I/O keynote showed off features and use cases for Gemini and other AI tools on Android XR. It'll be able to analyze your surroundings, translate languages—all of that useful stuff your phone can do—but that's not why Android XR matters. It's a big deal because it's a platform for different devices made by different companies. Right now, VR headsets and smart glasses are in a tough spot, and a unified platform could be just what they need. Let's look at why that's the case, how Android XR may be able to help, and what kind of timeline we're looking at for this effort.
The Fractured State of VR Headsets and Smart Glasses
I've been following VR/XR headsets for more than a decade, ever since the Oculus Rift brought VR into broad public attention. I've also been reviewing smart glasses for the last several years as they've steadily evolved from clunky headsets made for enterprise and industrial work into comfortable personal displays. Both of those categories have seen very uneven progress.
Full VR/XR headsets have fully matured with options for everyone from budget shoppers (the $300 Meta Quest 3S) to early adopters willing to shell out a ton of cash for the most advanced technology available (the $3,500 Apple Vision Pro). There are multiple systems to choose from, each with large libraries of games and software. These headsets have seen a lull over the last year, though. When the Apple Vision Pro was met with a less-than-enthusiastic response from the public (mostly due to very understandable sticker shock, but partly because its all-metal body and less-than-ideally-balanced head strap made it uncomfortable to wear for long periods), headset makers seem to have gotten a bit more cagey.
Even though it's fully developed as a technology, VR is still very much a niche novelty. Just the act of putting a big visor over your face and clearing out enough space in your home to fumble around without tripping on furniture means it requires some physical dedication that most other electronics don't demand. Moreover, if you want to use VR, you're probably not stepping foot outside the house for a while, or at least until eye or neck strain kicks in. These headsets are for enthusiasts, and despite Apple and Meta trying their best, almost no one looks at them as multi-purpose devices for work, play, and communication.
Then there are smart glasses. The term covers so wide and amorphous a range of devices that following every kind is like the technological version of herding cats, but for simplicity, I'm going to mostly be talking about what I call video smart glasses or wearable displays, which are often referred to as AR glasses. They're glasses that use angled lenses to project a big virtual screen across your eyes, and include the XReal One and the Viture Pro. Unlike headsets, their displays cover a limited field of view and look more like a huge TV or theater screen rather than an all-encompassing picture that replaces the outside world. They're also much less bulky and easier to put on and take off. I use AR glasses much more often than I use VR/XR headsets, including for work. They work great as portable, private monitors you can slip onto your face and use to watch a movie, play a game, or write an article through whatever phone or computer it's connected to.
The problem with them is that that isn't actually AR. Augmented reality requires reality actually being a factor, like overlaying useful information about whatever you're looking at or making a virtual object appear as if it's right in front of you relative to your surroundings. Some smart glasses do have motion sensors or even cameras to implement these features, but they're very underbaked and I've yet to find a pair that doesn't feel like a limited tech demo built into what's otherwise just a wearable monitor.
There's also a growing subcategory of waveguide-based AR glasses like the Even Realities G1 and the Vuzix Z100 with transparent lenses that offer genuine augmented reality and are lighter and more comfortable than video smart glasses. The trade-off is that their displays are much, much more limited in field of view and resolution. More importantly, if video glasses' AR features feel a bit half-baked, waveguide glasses have only just been put in the oven.
In other words, there are several different types of wearable displays with different levels of maturation, and each product currently on the market runs entirely off of whatever system their manufacturer developed specifically for that device. In other words, it's kind of a mess, and the lighter and more convenient the design is, the less polished the experience is. That's what makes Android XR so important.
Android XR: The Great Unifier?
The big reason those smart glasses I mentioned are in a very unpolished state is that each manufacturer is doing the bulk of its development in-house. Even Realities, Viture, Vuzix, and XReal are all doing their own thing to enable AR features. Even Realities and Vuzix models have completely different smartphone apps, voice and touch controls, and display formats, even when they're doing similar things like translating a language or giving directions.
Meanwhile, Viture and XReal are making devices that are effectively just Android media players with different head-tracking AR interfaces bolted on them (the XReal Beam Pro is an example). Everyone is doing their own thing their own way, and that's a lot of redundant effort to get similar smart glasses to do similar things. It's a nightmare for third-party developers, too, since apps need to be developed separately (or modified heavily) to work on all of these different platforms.
Android XR is a unified system developed to work on VR/XR headsets and smart glasses of different builds and form factors. It's a framework that standardizes many software and hardware functions across the board, like Android does with smartphones. That's a big deal, for the same reason that Android was a huge deal for smartphones: It ensures that different devices and apps from multiple manufacturers and developers all function with some level of consistency.
Before Android, non-iPhone smartphones were heavily fragmented, with almost every phone maker coming up with their own interface. Android provided a consistent, stable base for phone makers not based in Cupertino to build on. That's something smart glasses have fundamentally lacked, and while VR/XR headsets have more mature ecosystems, they're still largely locked to the manufacturer. That's what Android XR can be.
Consistency between devices doesn't mean much to buyers, but software does, and Android XR means the potential for a proper app store. Developers will be able to make one app and be confident that it will work in multiple headsets or smart glasses with the right hardware components. That's a bigger benefit than you might think; keep in mind that smartphones as a concept didn't really explode until the App Store opened on the iPhone 3G, only months before Android's equivalent (Android Market, now Google Play) opened. When a ton of software is available and the user can count on it running on their device, no matter who might have built it, that's a huge deal.
As For Hardware, Don't Expect Much This Year
For all of this promise, you probably won't be reaping the benefits of Android XR with a shiny new headset or smart glasses anytime soon. Google announced some new Android XR manufacturing partners during its I/O keynote, but nothing in the way of an actual device slated for release this year, at least by my standards.
The big hardware announcement was smart glasses company XReal revealing its own Android XR prototype and development kit called Project Aura. That's the second big Android XR headset to be announced after Samsung's Project Moohan, and while Moohan is clearly taking a run at the Apple Vision Pro, XReal's Aura looks to have a much more streamlined form factor, like a pair of traditional glasses. Neither of them is really intended for the average buyer, though. They're development kits, which manufacturers and software developers will reference to make other headsets, glasses, and apps for those headsets and glasses.
To be fair, you'll still technically be able to order at least one of them (Project Moohan is slated to go on sale later this year), but that's often the case for development kits. If you're willing to spend the likely hefty price tag, you can order these first-generation devices. You'll just be running into an almost nonexistent app ecosystem, more of a development playground that will hopefully, eventually be filled with easy-to-use software to take advantage of all that hardware. That was the case for the first Oculus Rift, Microsoft HoloLens, and is also true for Vuzix's innovative but unpolished Z100 smart glasses. I would be shocked if Project Moohan is sold for less than $2,000, and even more shocked if it has an app store with more than 40 true XR apps (not just 2D Android apps projected in front of you, a trick we saw with the Apple Vision Pro). It'll be an early adopter toy.
Google also announced its partnership with glasses manufacturers Gentle Monster and Warby Parker to make Android XR wearables. No products were mentioned at all, and considering they're mostly frame-and-lens folk and the displays of smart glasses are incredibly complex to build, I see Android XR implementation going one of two ways. One: Google does the overwhelming bulk of hardware development, including the lenses for the display, and the resulting smart glasses are ultimately Google devices with a Gentle Monster or Warby Parker veneer on them.
Or, two: They go audio-only, using the Android XR framework as a front-end for basically just Gemini through built-in microphones and speakers. Maybe a camera for snapshots and video will be added, but that's it. That's a much easier technical ask, and we've seen that approach done already by Carrera with its now-discontinued Amazon Echo Frames collaboration, and by Ray-Ban with its Meta-powered smart glasses. No screen, just sound and, for the Ray-Ban Metas, a camera. At that point, any augmented reality is thrown out the window, so I wouldn't consider it a real demonstration of what Android XR could mean for smart glasses. Some sort of display is necessary, because that's a fundamental part of AR: It visually augments the reality you're looking at.
I would love to see AR smart glasses get the same kind of huge jump in usability that Android afforded for smartphones, because right now they're too nascent to be compelling to the average person. I think Android XR is the best chance for that to happen, and if it also manages to pull VR/XR headsets out of the enthusiast-only ditch they're currently lodged in, that would be all for the better. It's just not happening this year.