If you watched Samsung Unpacked 2023 earlier this week, you knew that the company announced a new initiative in the field of Extended Reality (XR). What we didn’t get were any details on the actual physical product — which is where the new leak comes from.
as found galaxy club (opens in a new tab) (pass Sam Mobile (opens in a new tab)), a battery that just received regulatory certification in South Korea matches a specific model number that was rumored last year to be associated with an upcoming Samsung device.
The device, model number SM-I120, is believed to be some sort of AR/VR wearable. Coupled with the announcement on Samsung Unpacked, and the appearance of this battery module, it is likely that this hardware product is already on the way.
Goodbye Gear VR
We can’t glean that much from this battery leak — we don’t know the capacity, for example — but it points to a standalone device that can work on its own, without needing to be tethered to a computer or smartphone.
That makes it different from the Samsung Gear VR line, which are devices you have to plug your phone into. We can expect something very different from the VR hardware Samsung has put out in the past.
It’s worth remembering that this probably isn’t the product Samsung mentioned at Unpacked in partnership with Qualcomm and Google — it may in fact be just a prototype. But it’s an interesting glimpse at what’s to come.
Analysis: What exactly is extended reality?
Terms like virtual reality and extended reality can be tricky to grasp — especially when companies use them in different ways. What one manufacturer puts on something may mean something different than what another manufacturer puts on it.
Most people agree that virtual reality (VR) refers to a completely enclosed digital world (see Oculus Quest 2, for example). Augmented reality (AR) refers to putting digital overlays on top of the physical world, and you can now do this using the cameras on many smartphones (see Google Maps Live View).
There are also devices that mix the two: Mixed Reality (MR). Perhaps the best example of this is Microsoft’s HoloLens, although the term is tricky to pin down—sometimes it means an enhanced, more interactive version of AR, and sometimes it means VR with a little AR (such as video call feeds). ) into the virtual world).
Extended reality (XR) is most often used as a catch-all term to cover AR, VR, and MR — which means Samsung isn’t giving up much by telling us it’s working on a new technology. Expect the leaks and rumors to continue.
