It was 10 years ago during IFA that Samsung has unveiled the Gear VRa VR headset that used a Galaxy phone as its display and brain. A sequel followed and the company achieved great success – analysts reported that Samsung was the best dominant VR headset manufacturer in 2016. Of the 6.3 million headsets sold that year, 4.5 million were Gear VRs. The company also partnered with Microsoft and built a Mixed Reality AR headset in 2017, but it wasn’t long before Samsung pulled out the plug about his VR efforts.
That’s a lot of history, but it was necessary to explain why Samsung might be cautious about getting back into the game. And it’s quite careful. During MWC 2022, Samsung Electronics CEO Han Jong-hee hinted that the company is working on a new headset. Then, reportedly, in 2023 his headphones slowed down because of the Apple Vision Pro. During the July 2024 Unpacked for the new Galaxy Z foldable models, Samsung once again mentioned its upcoming XR product and said it will be released this year. But now 2024 is almost over: is the project still alive?
It is! Bryan Ma, an analyst at IDC, spotted a clue during Samsung’s recent presentation to investors. Under the Outlook for 2025 Below the title, a section reads “Improve connectivity between products, including upcoming XR devices, to further enhance user experiences in the Galaxy ecosystem.” Yes, devices, plural. And this just after explaining the plans to boost sales of the Galaxy S25 series.
A slide from Samsung’s third quarter financial report
This suggests that the Galaxy Unpacked event in early 2025, which will introduce the S25 series, will also show off Samsung’s XR headset. But given the number of delays we’ve had so far, that’s not certain.
Samsung is not working on this alone. This is a collaboration between Samsung, Google and Qualcomm (as mentioned at an Unpacked event in 2023). Google will likely provide the core software, while Qualcomm will contribute the chipset. The Meta Quest 3, for example, runs a custom build of Android on one Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset, so this is a well-known, successful recipe.
There is talk that the headset will use micro OLED displays with a higher pixel count and brightness than the LCDs used in Quest headsets. It is not clear whether this will be a Samsung-made screen or not. Anyway, Samsung has other components it could contribute as well. For example, late last year it unveiled an ISOCELL sensor with a integrated depth-sensing ISP which can be used in XR headsets for tracking.
Rumors about the Samsung Galaxy S25 have been circulating for a few months now and will only become more detailed as January approaches, the likely time frame for its launch. We’ll keep our ears to the ground for any mentions of XR devices that could appear alongside the flagship phones.