Usher in new era of smart glasses

Google is taking another swing at the smart glasses market, determined to leave the missteps of Google Glass in the past.

On December 12, the company unveiled Android XR, a new, cutting-edge operating system for headsets and smart glasses. With competition heating up from the Meta Quest series and Apple Vision Pro leading the market, Google is leveraging its Gemini generative AI to differentiate its offering.

Among the first devices expected to run Android XR are a pair of Samsung glasses, codenamed Project Moohan, which are expected to hit store shelves in 2025. The tech giant says the future headsets and smart glasses will “change how you watch, work and explore.”

While Google has yet to announce a timeline for additional hardware or software built on top of Android XR, the operating system is already available in preview for developers and select partners.

What makes Android XR different?

The combination of Android XR, Google Gemini and the glasses hardware means that the devices:

• Answer natural-language questions about your environment using Gemini.
• Search the internet or create an AI-guided to-do list using natural language.
• Play YouTube and Google TV.
• Show Google Photos in a virtual reality gallery.
• Use Circle to Search to find more information about an object in the real world or an item online.

Google intends Android XR to power several types of smart glasses.

“We want there to be many choices of stylish, comfortable glasses that you’ll love to wear every day and that work seamlessly with your other Android devices,” Shahram Izadi, Google’s VP and general manager of Extended Reality, wrote in a blog post.

The tech giant plans to start privately testing Android XR on new hardware soon. Expect new devices from Google’s Qualcomm partners, notably Sony, Lynx and XREAL.

WATCH: Google’s latest AI model, Gemini 2.0 Flash, is an incremental move to ‘agentic’ AI.

Developers can now try the Android XR Software Development Kit

Developers can experiment with the Android XR Software Development Kit today by visiting developer.android.com/develop/xr. Google is accepting applications for an Android XR Developer Bootcamp, which will offer early access to hardware in exchange for working with the internal XR team.

Android XR is compatible with ARCore, Android Studio, Jetpack Compose, Unity and OpenXR.

Since Android XR includes the Android Play Store, developers with apps already in the Play Store can automatically make those apps available on augmented reality devices. To translate conventional applications to augmented reality, Android recommended using its automated tools for spatializing Material Design (M3) components and Compose for responsive layouts.